- I'm gonna call to order our March 4th meeting of the Common Council for 2026. Will the clerk please
- call the roll? Councilman Flaherty here Stasburg here Piedmont Smith Zulek present. Sorry here Daley
- here Rallo here Ruff here Rosenberger here
- Okay, the agenda is posted online and on the doors, but this evening's agenda includes approval of minutes
- from five meetings held in 2025. Under reports, we'll hear from council members first and also from
- city offices where we'll have a report, long-awaited report from our new city controller, Jeff McKim,
- and also a report from our planning director, David Hittle, regarding House Enrolled Act
- 1001 under legislation. We have one ordinance for first reading concerning a proposed rezoning a PUD
- and then we also have a First reading of a resolution which proposes transparency requirements around
- flock cameras one important note if you've been to a council meeting before
- At our last meeting, our last regular session we made new legislation that allows us to discuss
- legislation during first reading, and so the PUD is a first reading tonight. In the past, we wouldn't
- have discussed something during first reading. We intend to discuss that. We may discuss that should
- the council decide to, and we've come up with some basic rules. This is the first time that we're doing
- first reading discussions, so we're
- kind of trying to feel this out. We're going to run it the way that we essentially that we usually run
- second readings and that council will
- receive a presentation from the city staff. We'll ask some questions. After that, there will be a period
- of public comment on the PUD. We've limited that time of public comment to 30 minutes. Now, that can
- be extended, so the council may choose to extend that, but it might just stop at 30 minutes. And then
- thereafter, there will be some sort of
- time for closing comments. The council can at that time either choose to make some type of a vote on
- the thing or to delay it for another time. All of those things are possibilities and is to the full
- body to decide. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, is there anything I missed out on the rules that we've
- proposed for first readings?
- Thank you very much then. Okay. So so with that we have minutes for approval We have those four Four
- five set of minutes. Are there any amendments to the minutes? Please councilmember Stossberg I just
- remembered that I messaged the clerk a couple of notes about those but I don't think that I
- Updated minutes wherever sent out. Did anybody see any updated minutes? I don't think so Okay, what
- would the clerk prefer me to do right now about those? the the two things were in the Meeting date of
- December 3rd there. I thought maybe it would be useful to have an explanation of why a motion ended
- up failing and
- with five yeses and two nos. I think it was after 1030, so we needed a two-thirds majority. And then
- I think there's a typo in the minutes from December 10th. Clerk Williamson, do you? Yeah, so we did
- fix the typo, and Chief Deputy Clerk McDowell did add in that note. I am actually talking with her right
- now about the minutes. I don't believe she sent them out as revised. She says they can be pulled from
- the agenda if you would prefer to do that.
- Okay, I mean if she fixed them and they were you know It was clarity so so I'm fine if they're fixed
- and those were the only two things fixed but if we would prefer to Move those two sets of minutes to
- next month like whatever That's the third and the third and the tenth, okay, we can resubmit them also
- putting that as an option as well that I
- So we can either vote vote to get them adopted as as amended or we can just move them off makes no real
- difference Okay, okay in which case any other any other corrections to the minutes Please councilmember
- Piedmont Smith, I don't have a correction, but so should we amend the motion and say We have we don't
- have a motion yet. Oh, we don't It makes it a lot easier any other corrections to the minutes I
- Okay, seeing none, are there any motions? Yeah, thanks. I move to, I'm sorry, point of clarification.
- Did we decide to pull those December ones or are we going to re-submit? She said she doesn't matter.
- We're approving all of them. I move to approve the minutes from July 30th, November 5th, December 3rd,
- December 10th, and December 15th as amended. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor
- say aye. Aye. Aye.
- Abstaining that motion carries nine zero will now move to a time of reports This is Limited each section
- of this is limited to 20 minutes and we'll start with councilmember reports as as I've been doing we'll
- do it in two things So if you could first do a report and then if you have a general statement, you're
- welcome to give it We'll start off with reports as anybody have a report Councilman Pema Smith
- Yes, I am the new council liaison to the Redevelopment Commission. So I just want to report that at
- Monday's meeting They did pass a resolution designated designating at the summit district as an economic
- development area, which is the first step towards Creating a residential TIF for that area to provide
- funding for infrastructure Thank you very much. Any other reports? Councilmember Stossberg
- Yeah, I guess I'll give a short report on the MPO, Metropolitan Planning Organization.
- There's kind of some interesting conversations happening there right now about the founding documents
- and whether the organizational structure that was decided on in the early 80s is still the
- best organizational structure to move forward with. So that will be an interesting conversation moving
- forward. And I somehow became vice chair of that organization, for lack of anybody else volunteering,
- because that's apparently how my life goes. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Any other reports?
- All right, we'll move on if anyone has a statement or something you'd like to read anybody with a statement
- Okay counselor Stossberg I'll go for that too. I just I think I have two things maybe that count in
- the statements. I'm not really sure So first I want to send a sincere. Thank you to counsel attorney
- later and deputy attorney Bennett This is their their last official council meeting with us
- And I just want to thank the two of you for your work and contributions to counsel while you guys were
- here I've really enjoyed working with you and I've really valued Your guidance and your legal advice
- that you've given me. So thank you very much for your service and Then the second thing I wanted to
- notes was constituent meetings. Is this the time for constituent meetings or is reports the time for
- consistent work?
- Okay, so I've been doing that new thing with constituent meetings where basically I'm having like kind
- of open office hours by appointment so that is coming up next week on Tuesday between the hours of
- Excuse me 1130 and one and if you want to make an appointment with me during that time The link to do
- that is on my public calendar. This worked really well last month It was actually really interesting
- having a kind of individual conversations and I feel like those Can be more meaningful to have one-on-one
- conversations with folks about things that they want to talk about So if you want to sign up for that,
- let me know right now Those are generally second Tuesdays like next week Tuesday the 10th. So thank
- you very much
- Awesome. Thank you so much. Any other statements councilmember daily? Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to
- say a big thank you and congratulations to the city of Bloomington and especially the community Family
- Resource Department for their wonderful black history month gala that they threw Saturday night. It
- was a beautiful event It was so much fun It's one of my favorite events all year where we get to dress
- up and be all Fancy and have fun with each other and dance any good food but also to celebrate all of
- the award recipients which was just really heartwarming and just so beautiful to see so I
- Big congratulations for yet another wonderful event. Can't wait to see you at next year's and I encourage
- everybody here to join next year. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other statements. Council member
- Smith. My March constituent meeting as usual on the second Saturday. So that'll be March 14th at 11 a.m.
- It's via zoom. You can go to the city council website to sign up for that. Thank you. Any others.
- All right. I have a very brief one. I don't tend to give statements during meetings, but I will give
- one tonight. And I just want to take a moment to say something about, I guess, the nature of this body
- and the responsibility that we share in the
- of public life, I think especially when issues like some of the things that we're going to talk about
- today are important and deeply felt, and I think we will disagree. And if you watch this council, we
- disagree often. It's not only inevitable, but I think that it is healthy, and I hope that you would
- all agree with me that it is healthy for the people that you've elected to disagree. This council was
- designed that way. There are nine of us here because a city as vibrant and as thoughtful as Bloomington
- deserves many voices,
- many perspectives and many approaches to the challenges that we face together. But even when we disagree,
- and to be clear, we disagree a lot, I think two things have always been true. And sometimes I think
- we maybe remember this, but we don't always, I don't know, say it enough. But two things have always
- been true in my experience serving alongside my colleagues who I respect is that, first, I have never
- a day that I've served on this council doubted that the other members of this council that you elected
- deeply care about Bloomington and that they want the best for this community and that even when we have
- differences of opinions that we might differ on how we want to achieve that goal we might vote differently
- we may advocate advocate passionately for different solutions I've never questioned the sincerity or
- commitment that each of us brings to this work secondly
- We all need each other. So we can't operate alone. We're not nine individuals operating in isolation,
- but we're one body. And the work of this council only succeeds when we listen, deliberate, persuade,
- and sometimes compromise. Democracy, especially at the local level, which is, I think, right now so
- under attack across this
- country is not the triumph of one voice over another, but it's the difficult and ongoing practice of
- governing together. And so that does not mean that everything's going to be unanimous.
- Lot of things will not be and I don't think that they should be I think healthy institutions make room
- for disagreement They make room for debate and this is why nine people were elected to serve you But
- disagreement amongst us should never be mistaken for indifference to the city that we all serve and
- it should never be framed as a failure of good faith and so I want to say just to the public as well
- as other elected officials in the room that
- This chamber belongs to all of you that it's natural for us to feel strongly about the issues that come
- before this council that Passion for our community is a good thing. But as we engage these difficult
- questions together I really just hope that we can do so in the spirit that reflects what's best about
- Bloomington that we speak with conviction But also with grace that we argue our positions not to question
- each other's love for the city not to question each other's resolve But that we remember that our goal
- is simply not to win arguments, but to build a future deserving of this community
- And so we deserve nothing less than our ambition and also nothing less than our grace So that is my
- statement for this evening that being said let us move on then for to Come comments and reports from
- the city offices. We have a report from first from Jeff McKim our Wonderful controller. Thank you. Mr. McKim
- Really Okay, I think now it works good evening council members Jeff McKim City Controller I appreciate
- the opportunity to provide an update on the city's 2024 annual comprehensive financial report or a CFR
- and the accompanying audits Let me begin with the most important point
- The audits are active and progressing. The auditors are not currently waiting on any deliverables from
- the city. We are responding to requests from the auditors in real time and additional testing requests
- may continue as the audit moves forward normally if belatedly. Just to give you a sense of the kinds
- of requests we're receiving, the most recent request that came in yesterday
- was for photographic documentation of the security surrounding a fire suppression system that had been
- purchased and installed with community development block grants for Centerstone. Hand staff had to obtain
- access to the Centerstone building and go over and take pictures of the locked doors that protected
- the fire system. I really appreciated their willingness to jump into action when we received the request
- so we could get it to the auditors in a timely manner.
- But in any case, to understand where we are on the schedule, it helps to revisit briefly how we got
- here. Prior to 2018, Bloomington was subjected only to a regulatory or cash basis audit. That framework
- focused primarily on cash inflows and outflows at the fund level, what we received, what we spent, and
- whether expenditures complied with statutory authority.
- The audited report at that time was only 35 pages, and that audit matches the way that Indiana units
- of government and almost all units of government everywhere are managed. In 2017, the General Assembly
- amended state law to require larger local governments that issue bonds to prepare financial statements
- under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAP. Bloomington falls within that category, and
- once a unit begins GAP reporting, it must continue in future years.
- Gap reporting is substantially more comprehensive. It requires government-wide financial statements
- that incorporate long-term assets and liabilities, including capital assets, bonded debt, pensions,
- leases, and other post-employment benefits. Revenues and expenses are recorded when earned or incurred,
- not simply when cash changes hands.
- The result is a much more complete picture of fiscal sustainability, but also a significantly more complex
- reporting process that differs from the day-to-day systems that local governments use to manage budgets
- and finances. Just to compare, our financial statement that's being audited right now is 197 pages as
- opposed to the 35 pages of the regulatory basis audit.
- Implementing gap reporting required structural and operational adjustments. Capital asset reporting
- has been the most significant lift as it requires coordination across multiple departments and reconciliation
- of historical project balances. In addition, new accounting standards for leases and subscription-based
- IT arrangements added further reporting complexity.
- The period from 2020 through 2022 also coincided with pandemic related disruptions and two successive
- auditor transitions, which didn't always go smoothly. Each transition required rebuilding institutional
- knowledge, which extended issuance timelines. It is also fair to say that not all delays can be attributed
- to external factors. Even the recent transition in the controller's office created additional delay
- in the 2024 cycle.
- My top priority since taking this position in January has been to regain momentum and ensure that this
- audit is wrapped up as quickly and accurately as possible. This administration took office in 2024 to
- find that the 2021 audit had only been completed a few weeks before, in December of 2023. Since then,
- we've made measurable progress. The 2022 audit issued October 2024, and the 2023 audit issued July of 2025.
- Steady movement towards restoring a sustainable annual cadence. As to where we stand today, three parties
- are involved in this process. The city, our compiling CPA firm that converts our financial data into
- GAP format, and the audit firm engaged by the State Board of Accounts. There's continuous communication
- among all three, as well as with our liaison at the State Board of Accounts. One key lesson from prior
- cycles is that responsiveness and early preparation directly affect the timeline.
- Where the city has been slower to provide information, the overall schedule is extended. This is an
- area within our control and we are managing it accordingly. Providing timely responses to audit requests
- is my top priority and that of my team in the office of the controller. At the same time, we're implementing
- process improvements, particularly around capital asset tracking and earlier end year preparation so
- that the 2025 cycle begins from a position of strength rather than catch up.
- While prior cycles have experienced delay for a variety of reasons, the responsibility for restoring
- a sustainable reporting cadence now rests with this office. Our objective is straightforward. Complete
- the 2024 audit as soon as practicable and restore the city to issuance of the 2025 report by the September
- 2026 deadline. Timely and accurate financial reporting is fundamental to market credibility, bond pricing,
- and public trust. We're focused on meeting that standard.
- Appreciate the opportunity to provide this update and I'm happy to try to answer any questions Thank
- You controller McKim questions We have none thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you All
- right, we'll now hear a report from director David Hittle of the planning and transportation department
- director Hittle take it away, sir. I
- Good evening, David Hittle director of the Department of Planning and Transportation here to talk a
- bit about Really two things one follows the other. The first is house bill 1001 which has completed
- its trip through the state legislature and I think has a an impact on how we do zoning and planning
- here in Bloomington and then I'll follow that up with a discussion of how we move forward with something
- we've been talking about for a while, which is UDO amendments having to do with housing attainability.
- So first about HB 1001
- So this was really the state's first major foray into the world of state-level Preemptive land use and
- development regulation other states coastal states and blue states in particular have been doing this
- for a while and and mostly in the realm of housing of taking away obstacles to housing and making it
- easier a few municipalities to build
- greater diversity of housing So Indiana's attempt if it had been approved in its initial form It would
- have allowed for Duplexes by right in all residential districts It would have allowed for at least one
- accessory dwelling unit on lots in all residential districts and it would have stripped away the current
- owner occupancy requirement and
- It would have prohibited all off-street parking regulations, both minimums and maximums. It would have
- eliminated or reduced most residential setback requirements and lot dimension minimums. It would have
- allowed by right for development of affordable housing on property used for religious purposes, which
- is a very broad statement, but that's all the language that occurred in the bill itself. And that's
- kind of a copy-paste idea from other states that have put that practice in place.
- And it would have eliminated most design and architectural standards So after two months of amendment
- pretty much all that fell by the wayside and what remains is requirement for one public hearing in 2026
- The purpose of which is to evaluate the zoning and subdivision ordinances to determine if they adequately
- promote housing developments and that in that hearing What shall be considered is density adu requirements?
- The potential reuse of vacant commercial buildings for residential use design standards lot size requirements
- off-street parking height limits and permit streamlining Following that meeting we are to report to
- the LSA or the Legislative Services Agency Minutes from that hearing and then any resulting changes
- made to the UDO. There's no teeth There's no stick or carrot attached to that requirement. It's assumed
- among other planners and the places where we chatter
- Those carrots and sticks might be brought to bear next year. But for now, it's just language What it
- also did HB 1001 I should say did it's still on the governor's desk. It's been approved by the Senate
- in the house It is expected to be signed by the governor, but hasn't yet it changed the way that fees
- are in a modest way the way that fees are tabulated for applications and
- Changes to building code and stormwater code and one of the disappointments it removed two Elements
- of building code that would have been changed to one of them would have allowed for single staircase
- construction which has been being done in a lot of other cities and that makes it takes the cost of
- building small apartments down about 12% and then it also changed modifications to elevator requirements and
- The final thing it does is it requires that we report as a city on progress toward? housing goals So
- we we need to establish those goals and then in that report we indicate how many housing units have
- been approved denied any Explain any discrepancies and data talk about average and medium home sell
- prices and year-over-year changes same with rent And then we
- Submit all that to the IH CDA, which is the Indiana Housing Community Development Authority and they'll
- compile and publish a report again No sticks no carrots attached with any of this language. It's assumed
- that the state will examine that idea next year None of this is a bad idea though. I think the reporting
- is a good thing. It's being done in a number of other states I think with differing levels of success
- because it's hard to enforce but but it's not a bad thing to get in the habit of
- So with HB 1001 settled And the state legislative session over for the year I think it's time to discuss
- moving forward with what we've been talking about for a while, which again would be UDO changes relative
- to housing attainability Changes that can make housing attainability something more within reach for
- more people in Bloomington and what we propose is to put together a working group consisting of city
- staff of city councillors and of plan commissioners and
- To construct draft language that we then take back out to the public something we've been doing for
- the past year Probably for three or four different open houses or public meetings And then bring back
- Come midsummer roughly summer to the Plan Commission and ultimately to the council So with that president
- Asari we would suggest that if I could reach out to you in the coming days and and talk about participation
- of council on that working group
- Then that's something that we would move forward with Awesome. Thank you so much director Hittle questions
- comments, please and councilmember rough Mr. Hittle, I was just wondering If you'd elaborate on on why
- because I sense there's some kind of a message you're trying to hoping to convey why you've Emphasized
- or it felt compelled to list
- the components that were stripped out of HB 1001 before there was a final product. And you did a pretty
- careful list of everything that was originally there and that was taken out. And I'm just wondering
- if there was a real intention to convey something to the council and the public by listing its original content
- Hidden message the things that I listed are things that we've talked about locally for a while And I
- think another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the states that have been successful and I use
- that word in a qualified sense because process wise I don't like the idea of the state telling a locality
- what to do in terms of zoning but
- Where it's been done in other places, you know it sometimes it is helpful to allow for new types of
- housing to be built So you kind of there's there's a plus and a minus to it But in other states where
- they are moving forward and now kind of once they get the taste of blood They they come forward every
- year with a new amendment a preemptive land use and development amendment most of them having to do
- with housing but but
- Those that are coming forward typically involve just those eight to ten to twelve things that I've that
- I mentioned there so again, no hidden message, but but they're they're all it's kind of the the the
- top twelve of Housing reform components if you will, thank you. Thank you Councilmember flirty Maybe
- worth noting that our own adopted plans have a lot of those components, too
- Thank you for the update Do you have a date? Let's say month or something by which you anticipate working
- through the process and bringing Proposed you do amendments to the Planning Commission for its consideration
- and thank you for laying out that process Yeah, we want to probably the very beginning of April have
- the first meeting of that internal working group and then our
- Timeline for the rest of the process would have public meetings in May and July We would bring the the
- basket of amendments to the Plan Commission in July and August and then to the council in August or
- September Okay. Thank you Councilmember Pema Smith Yes, thank you for your report so I heard two two
- things that actually did make it into House bill and
- 2001 Did you say that each city must hold a hearing this year about the various issues considered That
- were not passed in the bill or is it just that each city has to report on Housing development approvals
- and denials. It's both there is a requirement that in calendar year 2026 every jurisdiction so that's
- town cities in counties and
- a meeting and in that public meeting they they Explicitly examine their zoning ordinance and its ability
- or inability to Help provide new housing and there are a number of specific kind of the same list that
- we just talked about Specific elements that need to be reported on From that meeting so that meeting
- generates minutes and a report to the state following that every year thereafter
- Every municipality town city county is required to provide a housing report card essentially to the
- state that talks about housing starts Land use petitions that could lead to more housing than either
- approved or denied and and You know there it looks like the the language is gearing Towns up to say
- prove it to us that you're trying to build more housing Again, no sticks. No carrots yet, but we'll
- see what those turn out to be
- Thank you customer Stasberg How do you envision or maybe you haven't really thought about it yet that
- public hearing like is that something that's gonna be like a standalone kind of meeting is that gonna
- be incorporated into like a plan Commission meeting like is there any guidance or requirements or Like
- how how is that gonna work? That that that one calendar year 2026 public hearing. Yeah, I
- There's not much guidance. Let me see, I did take... The language states that the hearing must be public
- and its purpose is to evaluate zoning and subdivision ordinances to determine if they adequately promote
- housing development.
- They shall consider these various things. I guess there's not much more than that. Like a lot of this
- language, we're sort of left wanting what it is that they desire, what it is we must do to satisfy the
- requirement. My sense is that meeting could be, it could be a regularly scheduled meeting of the council.
- It could be perhaps a purposeful proprietary meeting that's scheduled for that. But you know, we're
- kind of left to wonder.
- I think it could also be a meeting at which we're considering amendments and things of that nature.
- Before that, though, before anything's filed as far as UDO amendments, we want to have the working group
- do its work and then produce language that we can take back out to the public. Probably meetings at
- the library branches, things like that, taking it on the road outside of this building because I think
- that outreach that we've done this year has been successful and get feedback.
- Whatever public meetings were talking about nobody's surprised by anything Thank you Councilmember Rallo
- So the one concern is that it Essentially it threatens home rule to some extent potentially and the
- other is that it's an unfunded Mandated reporting that is going to further burden on your department and
- What are the penalties for not reporting is there any So you'll let us know about further Work that's
- needed by your department and potential effect on budget. Yeah, it doesn't look to be terribly Dramatic
- as far as new work for our department because we're at the beginning of the year and we're going to
- be reporting on calendar year 2026 it's essentially just making sure that
- You know, we have a spreadsheet that's accounting for for again Housing denials housing approvals. They're
- also asking us to keep track of time spent its work, but it's it's not going to be taxing I think I'm
- I don't know much about it, but are there any is are there any targets specific to say efficiency standards
- or our sustainability and so forth as turn in terms of obstacles to You know
- Potential housing Targets that were given by this no nothing at all. Okay, nothing at all. Okay. Good.
- Thanks All right seeing no more questions Director Hittle, thank you so much. Thank you time.
- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you All right. Do we have any additional? comments or I'm sorry reports
- from council committees and
- Seeing none and we'll now move to the best first part of the meeting which is time for public comment
- This is a time to Oh missing something. Never mind. Sorry. Go ahead Reports or or appointments appointments
- what that comes next I thought that came first That comes next
- I'm so sorry. Don't worry, don't worry. Okay, so back to what we're doing now. Now is the time for public
- comment for things that are not on the agenda. You have three minutes to comment from the public mic.
- We ask if you kindly sign in. If you would like to make a comment, there will be another section of
- public comment at the end of the meeting. You can only comment in one of these two sections again for
- things that are not on the agenda. If you can
- sign in and state your name or your alias for the record. That would be great. And we'll start with
- people in the room, and then we'll move online. So with that, is there anyone in the room who would
- like to make a public comment on things not currently on the agenda? Excellent. Is there anyone online? Yes.
- Person online, take it away. Hi, this is Paul Russo. I would like to let people know that the Transportation
- Department is beginning its fourth round of public outreach on the Indiana Avenue Safety Improvements
- Project that concerns the stretch of Indiana Avenue at the west edge of the IU campus, such as Sample Gates.
- As a transit bicyclist, my initial reaction to the plan is unfortunately quite negative. The city seems
- to be doubling down on its expensive mistake that was made on 7th Street because two-way bicycle lanes
- are not the best practice. One-way bicycle lanes are intrinsically safer because they conform to expectations
- of motor vehicle drivers. At one point, the plan features a disappearing and then reappearing bicycle
- lane. At another point, there would be two
- two-way serpentine path that crosses from one side of the street to the other while yielding to motor
- vehicles and the intersections of Indiana at 7th and 10th are similarly ill-conceived. My view is that
- this would be an expensive engineering project that would make the area worse for bicycling not better.
- I bring all this up because to anyone who's listening, I encourage you to join me in asking this. Why
- does the city continue to regard expensive engineering as the best tool or even the only tool in its toolbox?
- for attaining safe transit for bicyclists and pedestrians. How much would it cost, for example, to hire
- two or three extra police officers dedicated to the enforcement of dangerous moving violations by motor
- vehicle drivers? How much would it cost the city to hire a public relations expert to educate the public
- about how to share public space with bicyclists and pedestrians? These questions keep me up at night.
- Thank you.
- Thank You mr. Rousseau any other commenters online Thank you so much, all right, well now move Appointments
- to boards and commissions. Do we have any? Like to move that For on behalf of committee team a that
- we reappoint Joe Throckmorton Joe Throckmorton to seat see one and
- the BZA and Katarina coke to seat c3 of the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association Okay, those were
- those were not your committees, but we That's fine so so are there any First is there a second? Okay,
- so there's a there's a there's a second any comments or questions Ideally to the folks on the committee,
- please come some of clarity
- Yes, thank you just a comment because I had brought up previously when mr. Throckmorton was recommended
- for reappointment to the BZA some concerns about Issues we'd had with the BZA as a body in recent years
- with respect to major delays on approving conditional use petitions specifically for duplexes And my
- recollection was that that our appointee had some involvement in that and and I the committee took it
- back and and
- engaged in more diligence around that question, which I really appreciate. So thank you for doing that.
- Also, thank you to Mr. Throckmorton for his service. I think he's been a very good BZA member, generally
- speaking. This is just an area of concern because it's really the core at which David Hittle was just
- sharing remarks about preemption issues to try to allow housing to move forward by setting regulations
- and letting people follow them. And I think, in general, we should change the conditional use requirement
- for duplexes and get rid of it. But even where we have it,
- We need to make sure that we're not creating undue delays unnecessarily So what happens with the conditional
- use is we have use specific standards in code and the BZA is meant to make findings about those staff
- usually propose findings And in particular at the first meeting this was heard if a majority of the
- members had voted to agree with staffs findings They could have approved a petition and meeting one
- instead only two of the five members
- voted, were willing to vote that way that night, and it ended up being delayed for six months. There
- were quorum issues, there were lots of other things. It entails additional cost, delay in housing,
- et cetera. So it's one instance, but it's, I think, reflective of a broader issue. And I think, I hope
- it's helped bring some attention to it as something that, you know, when the BZA is considering the
- findings proposed by staff, if they disagree with those findings, they need to bring different findings
- to vote on and decide if they're gonna do something different. And that's not what happened.
- And so, it really seemed like an unacceptable delay in my mind. I hope something was learned from it.
- I'm gonna support the appointment, and I just hope that our folks serving on the BZA really keep that
- in mind, that that type of delay really isn't acceptable. One last note on it, which is that it came
- up in the diligence, you know, should we have gone to Mr. Throckmorton and kind of raised this? I even
- thought about that at the time, and I chose not to, because the BZA is an independent quasi-judicial body,
- I do think they should have that independence to make judgments as they see fit I didn't feel it was
- appropriate to for the council to kind of Say this is what we think there are bodies we make appointments
- to where that is probably more appropriate I think the CIB for instance is one of them But BZA less
- so so I just wanted to address that as well. So again, thank you to all for looking into this I do appreciate
- it. Thanks Thank you so much any other comments or questions
- Okay, seeing none, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor of these two appointments, please
- say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? That motion passes nine, zero. Are there any other
- appointments? Councilman Ref, any other appointments? There was a pregnant pause, I felt like. Yeah,
- go ahead. Do we have any? No, I think that's all of them, okay? We have more? Go ahead, then.
- I guess I'll do it interview committee team B would like to recommend for the environmental Commission
- appointment Carl Geyser to seat c1 and Justin Meister to seat c6 and Then also for the utility service
- board to appoint Graham McKean to seat c3. Are there any comments or questions? Sorry, thank you motion
- in the second any comments or questions here Okay, seeing none all those in favor say aye I
- Any opposed say aye Any abstaining that passes nine zero as well General comment there are a lot of
- open positions throughout the year to serve on boards and commissions We would love all of the many
- of you who are here to apply for them so that you can help govern the city Thank you very much any other
- Appointments to boards and commissions. I believe that's all of them now Congratulations, we did it. All right
- We are now moving to legislation for first readings. Are there any motions? I move that ordinance 2026-06
- be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. There's a motion and a second.
- Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll?
- Nope, we can do a voice vote? Oh, we can do a voice vote? Yeah! Okay, well in which case, for the motion
- and the second to have the clerk read by synopsis and title, please signify yes by saying aye. All those
- in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? That carries nine zero. Clerk, will you please read?
- Ordinance 2026-06.
- to amend the city of Bloomington zoning maps by rezoning a 6.3 acre property from residential urban
- lot r4 and residential multifamily rm within the transform right development overlay tro to planned
- unit development pud and to prove a district ordinance and preliminary plan the synopsis reads this
- ordinance amends the zoning of the property from residential urban lot r4
- and residential multifamily RM within the transform redevelopment overlay TRO to planned unit development
- PUD. Thank you. Are there any other motions? I move to discuss this legislation. There's a motion and
- a second. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion carries
- 9-0. Who is here on behalf of the mayor? Please welcome our mayor.
- to give the presentation. Oh, you got applause. We resent it. I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. I
- welcome you, council. Good evening, everyone. The Hopewell neighborhood which you're considering this
- evening is a tremendous step forward in creating a Bloomington that our workforce can actually afford
- to live in.
- For more than three decades, Bloomington has been the least affordable place to live in the state of
- Indiana. Solving affordability for our community has no one simple answer, but is instead a combination
- of factors, only some of which are under the control of the city government. Land use planning and zoning,
- however, is a major obstacle in Bloomington.
- With the opportunity to design an entire neighborhood within walking distance of every service of family
- needs, our team, in partnership with Flintlock Labs, has created a design for nearly 100 homes. The
- neighborhood does three things. It provides the most affordable new homeownership options in the county.
- With starting prices anticipated at $83,500, we have hit a target that no one else has been able to
- meet. Second, we're providing a design that serves as a living model of what a few instrumental UDO
- changes can do for housing in our community. This will be a warm, welcoming, and beautiful neighborhood
- that's pedestrian friendly,
- and makes excellent use of land and resources, showing the community what's possible when we work creatively
- to design spaces that welcome more of our community. Third, it gets our smaller local builders back
- to building in Bloomington. Our zoning code and the financing behind creating units has far too long
- given the advantage to large scale private equity funded apartments that are not targeted to our workforce.
- Are not created by our local builders in an economy that is dependent on gaining more housing Our local
- skilled trades trades labor is shrinking and this provides a space to get our builders back to the table
- building locally Time is of the essence the community started envisioning what they wanted in Hopewell
- in 2017 City Council is not the final step in the approval process for this PUD and
- In fact, it is only midway. If you approve this development tonight, we still wouldn't be able to break
- ground on homes until the fall. If this state step takes longer, we will miss the entire building season
- and these homes realistically will increase in costs by five to 10%. The homeowners won't get more house
- or better features. They will simply be investing in our city process.
- Let's get Hopewell right, but let's make sure that we don't needlessly add process that doesn't,
- in the end, improve the product. That is cost our residents don't deserve to bear. We finally have a
- viable project that is also financially attainable for our community members. Hopewell will not solve
- our housing challenge in the city, but carried out well and used as a model for future incremental
- development and UDO changes
- It will be a significant domino that can move us forward as a city. Thank you for your consideration
- this evening. I'm going to turn it over to Ali from Flintlock lab. Thank you, mayor Thompson. Is Ali
- here or online? I was on that. Okay. Fantastic. Hi guys. I am able to screen share if that's okay. Okay.
- That is showing on my end. If you guys can see that.
- So, as the mayor referenced, we're working on, we're a small team of architects and landscape architects.
- We're based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and hopefully you guys were able to join us for our city council
- working session. So, some of this may be repeat. We work with a national nonprofit called the Incremental
- Development Alliance that trains small locals and is a part of the partnership of this project.
- So we're doing everything from design of the neighborhood design of the homes pre permitting of those
- homes, and then training of locals to build them both capacity building for general development of homes
- by locals in in town as well as the construction of these homes themselves. We're also joined by a partner
- who is based out of Atlanta.
- we've got a really broad team that does small development ourselves, right? So we, we understand how
- hard it is to get this kind of housing that is what we really need and what most communities are struggling
- to provide on the ground. We understand how many regulations stand in the way of that. One thing that
- we talk about a lot is who we, you know, demographically, statistically your housing is really different
- than it was when a lot of, um, you know, current building codes, current,
- construction financing tools, current housing system, ecosystem tools were built. The household size
- in America used to be around four people. It's getting really small. The most common household type
- number of people in a house is two adults, no kids. Our second most common household type is one person
- living alone. So that means about three quarters of our households are one or two people typically sleeping
- in one bedroom at night.
- The flip side of that is our houses are really large. And even the new best zoning codes tend to have
- lot sizes and tend to have minimum lot frontages that sometimes can be a challenge with that. So one
- of the things that we're looking at calibrating and testing through this PUD would then be potential
- ordinance changes generally is reducing those somewhat so that we can provide more individual household units
- for those small households, typically on smaller lot sizes, which then gets us to more affordable price points.
- This really helps support too, the costs that we see in terms of both physical and service infrastructure
- by the city. Typically, what we describe as what we're trying to achieve here is housing choice, that
- you can find the kind of house that you need at a price point that you can afford in a neighborhood
- that you like anywhere in town throughout your life cycle. That does mean that there should be some
- homes that you can raise small children in, you should have some big family houses.
- Typically, statistically, not a lot of them, but a couple. There are a few in this neighborhood. You
- also need a wide variety of household sizes and arrangements to provide for those smaller households
- that are really underserved generally within the market.
- This works significantly better than only being able to provide slightly larger houses on larger lots
- with larger backyards and using green infrastructure practices and working really closely with the city,
- we're able to provide all of the stormwater requirements within smaller green space footprints so that
- we can provide more diverse housing at better price points and in a walkable neighborhood format. We
- also want to
- recognize as the mayor reference that there are a lot of deadbolts on the door to getting the housing
- ecosystem that we need. Zoning is one. We've already made a huge step in Bloomington and passing a new
- UDO. It is really common within cities that have done so to find a couple of things that do need some
- calibration. Likely once that first round of calibration is done, it would not be unusual to now that
- some new things have been legalized, to find some things that no one was aware was a problem because
- they weren't trying to do projects
- the impact of that. So that process is really normal.
- Subdivision codes is another place that we see presenting a lot of challenges in a lot of communities
- in being able to provide attainable housing that's really geared around homeownership. Building and
- fire code is another thing that is a state level requirement that a lot of municipalities nationally
- are really working together through their municipal leagues to support state level changes to those
- building and fire codes to make sure that we can have practical solutions that are both safe and affordable.
- stormwater and financing rules tend to not be very flexible. And so we have to also work around the
- fact that not each one of these deadbolts is something that through a PUD can be addressed. And so sometimes
- we have to come up with creative solutions to work around things that are not flexible. The way that
- the construction will be financed, the way financing will work for future buyers, those are federal
- statutes that really are not flexible at all. So as we look at Bloomington's both affordability challenges,
- we also notice that there is
- Especially compared to peer cities. I'm in a peer city. I'm in a fellow college town, almost exactly
- the same population, almost the same student population, same karst landscape. And we also struggle
- with providing enough owner occupied housing in a market that is really geared and influenced by that
- large student population.
- Also as referenced, the Hopewell master plan has been long in the process and even in the original master
- plans for, so we're down in blocks eight, nine, and 10. There were originally more creative household
- layouts and lot layouts, homes fronting onto greens, envisioned in that original master plan and desired
- by citizens. So high level, what is this PUD trying to achieve? We're trying to get to a mix of housing
- types of price points.
- We're trying to get to a full pre-permitted set of home designs that streamlines our permitting,
- reduce costs, and gets people in homes faster. That also simplifies our zoning somewhat as we are permitting
- a set of houses, not necessarily a set of architectural standards. We're going to be able to see exactly
- what the products are within the PUD itself, which is a way that a lot of cities are starting to move
- on these kinds of projects. This builds opportunities for local builders. They will be
- coached and trained through process. Some of them may already be really established and may need less
- of that support. For those more experienced small developers and locals, this will be a really turnkey
- shovel-ready project that lets them do what they're best at without getting bogged down in process.
- We're bringing a lot of the efficiencies of larger scale development to local developers.
- We're also working with the RDC and the City Attorney on legal frameworks to support permanent affordability
- as well as blended market rate homes. And we had a lot of great commentary from Plan Commission about
- the best ways to do that that work within some of those inflexible federal finance rules. So we are
- working through that framework now to ensure that these are both affordable at beginning sale and long term.
- There's ongoing community outreach and developer training as part of this program, as well as focus
- groups. And we are kind of in our overall program schedule. We are working through this PUD and platting
- process. So if approved, the civil engineering team on this will work through preliminary plat to plat
- lots. We would have an initial phase that we are working on that is
- is R4 compliant. Several homes, it would be able to come vertical more quickly. And some of those lots
- would be duplexes now, could be split later if the PUD is approved. And then horizontal development
- would occur all in one phase with then home construction phased in once the horizontal infrastructure is in.
- And we ran through some case studies as well as part of this program showing some general ideas of the
- way that some of these ideas could be brought into the rest of the city. One thing that Bloomington
- has that is an enormous asset we don't see a lot is quite a few platted, unbuilt alleys. We often call
- these paper alleys, right? They exist on paper but not on site often.
- One thing that we have seen cities do previously is allow alleys in my hometown, currently allows this,
- you can use an alley as street frontage. One of the other things that's really specific to Bloomington's
- pattern is you have very deep lots. We've got really good build out at the street, which means as you
- drive around a neighborhood, it doesn't feel like there's anywhere to infill develop.
- And in a lot of really successful college towns like Austin, Texas, you see a lot of those old homes
- being torn down. That is an enormous challenge for us, both from an architectural standpoint, from a
- character standpoint, but also from an affordability standpoint. The most affordable house is often
- an existing house. So there's an opportunity here with allowing alleys as frontage, which is something
- that we're testing within the PUD, to create rear lots that can be platted separately, can
- be sold separately, and can which
- can functionally double our amount of homes that we can produce in a block while preserving the homes
- at the street. And so this is the kind of idea we were trying to test on a smaller scale to then be
- able to be vetted before being brought citywide. So what are some of the other things that we're asking
- for in the PUD to achieve this?
- We're trying out smaller streets, so smaller rights-of-way that still meet all of the standards of fire
- code and fire access and ADA, but do sit within a narrower street frontage, which is picking up some
- additional lots and is, in our opinion, really aligned with the transportation plans, respecting of
- existing street rights-of-way.
- And this is something that we work on a lot. You know, one of the things that cities struggle with is
- that streets sometimes show up on the books as an asset, but they are really a liability. There's something
- that we have to pay for or we're not be able to get tax revenue from. The more additional right of way
- that we have that we are not putting into productive use, the harder that is from an overall balance
- sheet and buildable thriving place standpoint. So we're seeing lots of communities move to smaller rights
- of way, especially in their walkable communities, keeping traffic slower.
- We're working on diverse housing frontages here. So houses that like some of these built examples of
- our work front onto green spaces front onto small streets or front in some cases on only onto trails.
- We're also working on reintroducing several housing types and sets of density. So the pre-approved plans
- are intended to be able to be rolled out in the future city-wide. And so they provide some good models
- of specific building details and separation details, fire code, you know, compliance, separation between
- townhouses, fire rated EADS. The typical home builders often are not gonna run into, but by vetting
- those through pre-approved programs often can get to a workforce training standpoint of comfort with
- those details that works really well
- in the field. This can be a way to reintroduce a good diversity of housing types, building types that
- are compliant with all of our details in an easier way that makes for faster uptake. So site plan and
- review, we ran through a few different variations of our, we've got our parcel A planning area, which
- is block 10, parcel A on block nine, parcel B, which is a slightly different set of standards, we're
- preserving an existing building on parcel B. Under
- The current R4 zoning, which is our most intensive single-family zoning, which we can actually build
- up to, I believe, a fourplex per each lot, we're able to get 28 home lots under those current standards.
- A lot of that is based on, we've got a lot of lot depth. That means that even though our lot minimum
- is able to be smaller because of the lot frontage, we've got to comply with both. So we end up with
- larger lots than the lot area minimum might suggest in a lot of these cases.
- So we also had some early variations with, you know, full 60 foot rights of way and a little bit more
- single family focus and trying to find the right balance between those rights of way width.
- engineering standards, fire standards, and our trash truck turning radii, we ended up with a blend of
- really small multifamily buildings, lots of single families, some duplexes, some townhouses, a really
- good variety in size, and ended up with around 98 homes. From an accessibility standpoint, this site
- is a little limited by its topography. We have more or less a ridge line,
- up along this section, crossing Fairview. And so this is our most level section. So you'll notice we're
- clustering our accessible homes, which will, we've got three different standards of accessible homes,
- universal design, which is compliant with city code, FHA compliant units, which is also called an ANSI
- type B unit.
- And then full ADA compliant units, which are the kind of standards you would see in a nursing home or
- a hotel. That's the most stringent standard. And so we've got three different kinds of those units that
- are really clustered in locations that they can be provided with a zero step entry based on topography.
- So 30% of our units, almost 29% of them meet universal design standards exceeding that 20% minimum standard.
- And half of those universal design homes are an ANSI standard rather than they'll kind of lower the
- minimum universal design standards. So we've had some good detail conversations with our local accessibility
- groups to get some feedback of specific priorities that are high priority to include even in those universal
- design homes when the full
- full standards can't necessarily be met for some, you know, often grading reason. As a little bit of
- a background, because we've had a lot of conversation about accessibility on this, just to make sure
- everybody's a little bit on the same page, the ADA or ANSI Type A, that most, you know, kind of stringent
- set of standards, the largest items that it requires are, you know, the things that do increase the
- size of the home.
- Our bathroom requirements, we've got to get a full five foot turnaround within the bathroom. There is
- also a full five foot six open space around the toilet. Those two components are larger than we would
- typically see in a residential bathroom. And so you really do have to start the home design from a bathrooms
- and kitchen standpoint. And the hallways end up wider too. Do you need to have a five foot wide hallway
- instead of a more typical, you know, slightly over three foot hallway?
- Fair Housing Act is what is required anytime we have a building that has more than four units in it.
- All of the ground floor units are required to be fair housing. So these are more common in residential
- units and often if you hear someone say it's an accessible unit, this is typically the standard that
- they're referencing. These are also called ANSI type B units.
- and they have a larger area in the bathroom than a typical bathroom might, but much smaller,
- as you can tell, than an ADA bathroom. There are approaches that are required, but not full turnarounds.
- So again, there's kind of our ANSI A, ANSI B, and then the ANSI C type. Nobody really uses much. So
- looking at examples,
- of what that looks like on the ground, right? So we've got to get a two-bedroom, one-story unit in,
- it's about 900 square feet. For reference to a two-bedroom fair housing unit, it can be about 10% smaller.
- So they're not dramatically different, but typically, you know, if we're looking at universal design,
- we can get almost a full three-bedroom in the square footage that we can get an ADA unit. So there's
- a little variety and some costs and, you know,
- priority choices that will be made I think through some of the development of exactly which house goes
- on which lot and it sounds like as we develop the house plans themselves in detail that there's some
- good flexibility to make sure that we are meeting some of those accessibility goals in more specifics.
- Examples of the units that are shown in the plan here, we've got a two-bedroom accessible unit that
- is one story that's called the eGrit.
- We have a one-bedroom accessible unit that is called the Gardena, and then our full ADA one-bedroom
- is called the B-Bomb. And there's a single one of those in one place, and then there's a duplex in another location.
- One central design feature of the site itself is that we have both a pedestrian network, which we're
- showing in the green, which is used as a primary frontage for all of these central houses. The front
- door and front porch point to that direction. And then we've got our car circulation in blue. So we
- also have traditional street frontage towards First Street and towards Wiley. Wiley is provided with
- a larger setback than the other streets so that we can preserve some existing trees along Wiley and
- preserve more of the character that it currently has.
- From a phasing standpoint, although all the horizontal infrastructure will be installed at once, we
- anticipate that there will be a first phase that is done with a larger setback on these few lots in
- R4 zoning. And then the rest of Block 10 would be the next phase that goes vertical. We would likely
- start along First Street for a third phase and build out along Wiley for the fourth phase. The fifth
- phase is then the redevelopment of the building on Block 8.
- From a grading and infrastructure standpoint, we're looking at a comprehensive stormwater design for
- both parts in which the residential sections are handling more water quality and the commercial section
- is handling more water quantity. And so there are not intended to be any changes to stormwater code
- or standards within the PUD. These will meet typical city standards. Fire and trash collection will
- occur at the
- pink drop off points. The fire radius works within the lanes, which are classified as a custom street
- type. Alley's are allowed under Bloomington code to be blocked for some amount of time by private use.
- These are fire access routes and so they do need to remain clear. So they've been classified as lanes,
- which is a custom street type. They are functioning 20 feet alleys that are intended to be rear service
- kind of access to the homes.
- So we've got a couple of custom street sections in here. The typical street section within the transportation
- plan for Rogers is slightly too wide to work with the existing building. And so there's a custom street
- section that has been vetted by engineering that's in there. First Street is intended to remain as existing
- and has been recently improved. Jackson Street was temporarily in some of the early phases considered
- more of a lane. It was not a main access. It doesn't connect all the way through. It is a dead end.
- It's preferred by probably the future
- public safety user of Block 8 to be lower traffic and so it is intended to be not quite as high traffic
- as Fairview is and so it has a little bit narrower street section and a little bit more casual detailing
- on that. Fairview Street is currently only 16 feet wide. It is being widened to a 48 foot wide right
- of way with parking on one side.
- Wiley is intended to remain as it is. It has a historic character that's continuous along Wiley. And
- so it's intended to remain as is. And then you can see our lanes there, a 20 foot total width. And then
- some examples of the units, size, scale. And then we've got units that we can run through if there are
- questions. And then I believe that these are included in your packet as well. And they're organized
- by sale price. I'm here for any questions that you guys may have.
- Excellent. Thank you so much council members questions If you have any sorry councilmember Puma Smith
- Normally we would have a presentation from planning staff. Is that not envisioned this evening? Mayor
- Thompson or Director Hiddle, would would you like to add anything? I
- Thank you Eric Grulick development services manager, so I'm happy, you know Ali kind of gave a great
- overview of the project as a whole I can certainly go into some of the specific district ordinance standards
- You know kind of the process that went through to how we got here So I'm kind of open to what would
- be most beneficial to the council and
- You know like second certainly steps through some of the specifics of the district ordinance if that's
- something that would be beneficial Otherwise, you know the petitioner did a great job with the overview.
- So I don't really have a lot to add That's not in the packet So with that, thank you council members
- any questions Councilor Puma Smith I
- My first question is why is the final plan approval being delegated to staff and not going back to the
- Plan Commission? And given that this is the first condition of approval If we approve this when and
- how will the public have a further opportunity to provide input as Details of this project really come
- together Yep, great question so
- You know one of the things that we're trying to do with this is look at ways that we can streamline
- the overall process So the next public hearing for this will be the primary plat So that does have to
- be heard by the Planning Commission or Platte committee certainly most likely that will be the Planning
- Commission So they will hear the primary plat for this and they did delegate You know one of the requests
- from the petitioner was to delegate final plan approval to staff so that was something that the Planning
- Commission did go along with you know the
- Items that we typically look at in terms of you know, should final plan be delegated to staff are you
- know? What are the unresolved issues, you know? What are maybe the conditions of approval that had further
- review that was necessary as part of that with this particular PUD, you know There aren't those elements,
- you know, there aren't a lot of unknowns that we're still trying to figure out at this point You know,
- there's not not a lot of things that would
- You know necessarily a warrant a public hearing that would be changing from what's presented Tonight
- or with the beauty as it stands right now So the next public hearing would be for the primary plat and
- that would be at the planning commission Thank you Other questions Thank you, so I have several different
- things that I want to pursue but for the first one I
- I guess I'll preface by saying that one of the things that I've been trying to do all along in this
- is align the picture with the words on the page in terms of what we're allowing in the PUD. So in terms
- of the use table and in terms of, and this will be a question ultimately I promise, the petitioner's
- statement, which among other things, and the presentation itself,
- says that the PUD seeks to demonstrate smaller lots, context-based frontage, and simplified subdivision
- processes can expand homeownership opportunities without compromising neighborhood form or environmental
- performance. And the use table itself doesn't seem to align very well with that stated mission in terms
- of allowing group living, which would kind of by definition need to be larger.
- larger houses, larger properties in general, especially the way that group living ends up being defined.
- Single-room occupancy, same kind of concept. Some of the community and cultural facilities that are
- allowed are under conditional uses. Libraries, museums, that kind of thing. There's also no minimum
- parking or anything like that, which also doesn't align well with
- the community and cultural facilities, commercial uses, et cetera. So in light of terms of state law
- not allowing us to amend the PUD and only allowing us to make reasonable conditions about it, would
- the petitioner be open to a reasonable condition around aligning the use table with the actual stated
- intent of the project?
- One downside of not being in the room is Anna may want to speak to this as well, but I know one discussion
- that we have had as we moved from planning commission into this meeting.
- is that we had included all uses that are currently legally allowed within R4. The UDO goes to great
- lengths to be really flexible about use. But because there are lots of uses allowed in R4, because we
- had not previously suggested changing those to Plan Commission, we did not feel comfortable making any
- edits to those in between Plan Commission and City Council as those were as requested in Plan Commission
- converted into a use unit table. We are relatively neutral as to which uses,
- This is obviously intended as a residential home ownership focus project, both maintaining flexibility
- in the future is really high value, but there are certainly some uses allowed in R4 that we would be
- very surprised if are ever desired in this zone or ever really practically used in this zone. So very
- open to council recommendations and thoughts on any uses that as a condition of approval would wanna
- be struck from that use unit table as it is, it's very broad, but it is,
- R4s use unit table, which needed to be modified to add multifamily buildings. We have a couple of four
- plexes and up to 12 plexes. So still very small multifamily buildings, but those would not have been
- allowed under typical R4 uses. And so those are really the only changes. It's legalizing the building
- types that you're seeing here within the planning areas. So if modifications to that are desired, that
- is certainly up to the city.
- Okay, thank you. Would Director Killian-Hanson like to add to that on behalf of the petitioner? Okay,
- I see a shaking of the head back there. But it sounds like the essential answer was yes, that the petitioner
- would consider that kind of condition. And I guess then the question kind of goes back to Mike
- The question kind of goes back to my colleagues, whether that kind of condition would also be something
- that they were interested in, because I'm certainly interested in pursuing that. Thank you. Other questions?
- Councilmember Flaherty. Thank you. I think this was covered implicitly probably through the presentation,
- but just to put a finer point on it for myself and for the public, why did the administration choose
- to propose a planned unit development
- for this block and a half instead of either using existing zoning districts from the UDO, there are
- many, or if none of those districts was good enough considering the possibility of amending the UDO
- such that we would have a district that would be good enough to satisfy the administration's interests
- for this site.
- So just asking yeah, but basically it's a strategy choice, right? So why PUD instead of either existing
- zoning districts or zoning code changes to existing districts? Just looking to hear more. Thank you
- In order to do the The changes that we needed in order to I mean essentially drive the house costs down
- We would need not only changes to the UDO, but also changes to the transportation plan, which would
- be onerous and would take a very long time. And so instead, we decided to proceed with PUD since we
- are urgently in need of housing now. It is our intent to proceed as we have been discussing
- with UDO changes in the future that that lead to this kind of attainable housing in the meantime, it
- serves as a living model to the community of what this kind of land use can do Thank you if I follow
- up just Would you or someone be on your staff be able to cover more specifically the transportation
- plan amendments that would have been required to do what you all would like to do I'm just That's the question
- Yeah, thanks. I can't remember the various transportation plan needed changes off the top of my head,
- but they had to do with street wits and they were calling for, Ali, do you remember the changes? Yeah,
- the lanes needed to be a custom street section type and a lot of the background, and there was a lot
- of internal discussion about whether a PUD made sense or whether ordinance changes made sense,
- Some of the background on this, too, is there was a known set of ordinance changes coming through. It
- has been discussed really broadly. But that's on a different timeline than this project was. And so
- part of the idea behind the PUD was that this was going to be an opportunity to test some things. In
- the meantime, while that timeline for UDO changes remains the same during that intermittent time, some
- of these things could be tested and then vetted before pulled out citywide. So some of these changes
- did feel, I think, to city staff like they were going to be some
- that they would want to test on a smaller scale and so the PUD gave an opportunity in this timeline
- to test some of those ideas but the lanes needed to be made a custom street type. First Street as it's
- currently built doesn't match the transportation plan exactly, neither does Wiley or Rogers and so each
- one of those needed to be a custom street section which is not currently legally allowed within the
- transportation plan unless you're doing a PUD and so
- a general later recommendation might be building in a little bit more flexibility on existing streets
- within the transportation plan. But this was an opportunity to test what would some of those changes
- need to be to get there to streamline the process. But the custom street sections was a big part of
- the final decision to move forward with a PUD. Thank you. Other questions?
- Feel free to ask them all your questions if you'd like. Oh, I don't know if you want. I don't know if
- you realize what you're asking there or offering. I have several. So looking at the common area and
- walkways that bisect the development, who is going to maintain those?
- There's an HOA that is part of the PUD documents as a commitment to an HOA that will perform all of
- the common landscape maintenance. And the cost of the HOA has been incorporated in the housing affordability
- metrics. And so all the housing affordability, the percent AMI calculations, those are all calculated
- utilizing the understanding that there will be an HOA fee and then those fees are estimated within overall
- affordability as well. Okay, great.
- And you mentioned in your presentation that you're looking at how affordability will be guaranteed long
- term. Can you speak a little bit more to that. And I guess my main question and maybe this is also for
- city staff is how do we know that you can actually follow through with the commitments of more affordable
- homeownership opportunities.
- going into the future, not just the first owners. There are commitments within the PUD language itself.
- So those are legally binding to the percentage of homes that are affordable specific AMI levels. And
- so the PUD itself bakes those guarantees in both in terms of upfront sale,
- affordability and long-term sale affordability. The exact mechanism of that is still in debate. Planned
- commission had some really valid concerns that deed restrictions are specifically called out in some
- places as a requirement of the method to provide that. That has in some jurisdictions caused some conflict
- with the way appraisals work for mortgages, which can make the mortgage less attainable for somebody
- purchasing an affordable home. There are some good calibrations that are
- The thing that is still being worked through is those calibrations of the exact mechanism But the PUD
- itself has a baked-in guarantee which is legally binding in terms of affordability Shall I go on I see
- another hand so You have a follow-up go ahead go ahead Stasper I have a follow-up about the affordability
- things that was kind of the second like grouping of
- Stuff that I wanted to make sure to talk about tonight So, of course I guess there's there's like two
- pieces of this question one is kind of what Councilmember Piedmont Smith just said in terms of how How
- are you actually ensuring these are going to be affordable long-term? What's the mechanism and I and
- I wonder if I'm interested in director Kelly and Hanson following up on this because as the
- RDC Representative like I guess I'm just interested in that
- that process and how the RDC is going to Ensure that in terms of the first time buyer and then subsequent
- buyers because these need to be permanently affordable
- Yes, we are agreeing to what is in our code at this time, despite there are some issues with it. So
- I do just want to back up about affordability, because I do think that there are some things that are
- maybe misunderstood and give kind of a 10,000 foot view, if you don't mind a few words. I cannot talk.
- I'm sorry. Our current development code relies heavily on deed restrictions to create the affordability
- and for sale housing. While that approach can work in rental housing, it often conflicts with the way
- that homeownership is actually financed. Most homeowners rely on conventional mortgage that must meet
- standards of the national secondary mortgage market.
- Institutions like Fannie Mae Freddie Mac These mortgages require homes to have clear marketable title
- and predictable resale rights when deed restrictions cap resale prices required government approvals
- of buyers or restrict financing lenders can no longer guarantee that the mortgage will meet those standards
- in Many cases they cannot issue the loan that leads to a simple but critical truth
- A policy that makes homes technically affordable but impossible to finance does not create home ownership.
- It prevents it.
- If our goal is to help residents build wealth through ownership, we need tools that work within the
- mortgage system, not against it. Cities across the country use approaches that maintain affordability
- without undermining financing. Some of those mechanisms include silent second mortgages, a second loan
- that fills the gap between what a household can afford and the cost of the home. We use it in many of
- our programs currently, so it's not new to us.
- It has no monthly payments and is repaid upon refinance allowing the city to recycle the subsidy There's
- also shared equity agreements. The homeowner keeps the most appreciation while a portion returns back
- to the city to support the next homebuyer So it's not exactly tied to each specific home though It could
- be but it would be a rolling basis in could in some instances again We're working through a lot of this
- process. There's also a right of first offer so what that means is that it allows the city or an
- Nonprofit to preserve the affordability when needed without permanently restricting the deed. So these
- tools are often used and they're refinanceable they're marketable and accessible to ordinary homebuyers,
- but you know Fundamentally, I think that we need to talk about the fact that homeownership and affordability
- is is essentially a supply and demand issue so we should not be focusing only on
- One or two or six units we need to be talking about the entire market and what that implication is so
- I'm happy to get into that a little bit more But you know, we need units of all types at all price points
- It helps relieve pressure on the existing housing market But as far as structural ideas of how we might
- achieve that silent seconds Shared equity models it could be a right of first or
- Offer but again, we are committing to what our code says at this time The nice thing about the RDC owning
- this is that we can control how these are sold who they're sold to what kind of units they are As opposed
- to just turning it over to another developer So we're making that commitment the zoning approval is
- not tied to the specific mechanism in which we are ensuring that Your follow-up go ahead Sure that that
- totally answered my
- the intent of my question was to actually learn more about how the RDC was doing that. But I'm just
- going to take your last statement there. So essentially, the RDC is going to pick and choose who gets
- to buy these.
- We have a statutory offering process that we have to follow and so we will make the commitment to provide
- the affordable units and they will be present in fact If you read the PUD language, you would see that
- more than 50% are at 100% of the area median income where the PUD or the UDO currently only requires
- 15% Right. Okay
- So essentially, because you have that statutory requirement around how your offerings work, that's part
- of ensuring this, because then your offerings can require buyers to check certain boxes. Correct. OK.
- And then I guess my other follow-up around affordability was related more to the actual costs themselves
- and this idea that
- And I have read lots of constituent comments around this idea that they're being made affordable by
- making them smaller. And I appreciate that one of the arguments here in general for this kind of development
- is that family size has shrunk and our housing stock has not. And so a piece of affordability is size.
- But I guess I just want to talk about that, like affordability
- per square foot affordability in general and like I just kind of tried to like run these things through
- mortgage Calculators a little bit and going like okay some of these things which seem really affordable
- You know and and they would maybe have a decent mortgage payment at the end after somebody's saved $36,000
- for their 20% down payment. So is is that a piece of your
- Calculus in terms of how these offerings are going to go in terms of that down payment potentially assistance
- that gets that mortgage payment ultimately to that Like AMI affordability range. Do you know what I
- mean by that question? You'll connect me kind of I don't quite understand your question when we're committing
- to a certain AMI we are committing to the income and the payments and you know looking at the entire
- financial picture, but So
- So like I guess I just want to know if that's like based on the sale price based on the estimated mortgage
- payment How does how does the like a down payment fit into that because one of the other real struggles?
- Especially for first-time homebuyers is saving that significant chunk of money in the beginning. So
- the Just to be clear we're doing land use tonight and and we have committed to the affordability guidelines we
- don't know which mechanism is gonna work best for our local lenders, but part of the next steps in the
- process is to do a lender's workshop and to put lots of these pieces together. So maybe the reason that
- you're not getting the answer that you want is because we haven't nailed down all of these things, but
- the cost of the house will be tied to what the house costs
- To build and of course down payment is is Associated with the cost of that house. We do have down payment
- assistance programs within the city So all of these pieces are part of the housing puzzle Thank you
- Allie did you want to jump in on that? Yeah
- quick comments. I think the first one is the way that we calculated it. So federal standards on defining
- AMI are going to say that you can't spend any more than 30% of your gross income monthly on all housing
- costs. And so the AMI assumptions are both taking into account the mortgage payment and estimated property
- taxes at current rates and estimated utility taxes at that square footage and things like the HOA payment.
- And so the
- stated percentage of AMI that they are affordable to is tied to that full cost of housing relative to,
- yes, which does relate to the sale cost of the house. There are mortgage down payment assistance programs
- that are being explored as part of this. And then the overall long-term affordability will relate to
- what kind of a mortgage the buyer qualifies for. So if they qualify for an FHA mortgage or a VA mortgage,
- their down payment might be as small as 3%,
- We have for now estimated affordability based on a 20% down payment, which is a large, you know, an
- average size payment for normal affordability in terms of, you know, market standard. But that is something
- that will be calibrated as we work through the project. And then kind of a comment to,
- questions a few minutes ago, it is also typical that we would have some sort of buyer qualification
- for the formal affordable units. And so that process working through RDC is going to be really normal.
- So that you don't end up with an affordable unit that's being purchased by somebody that makes 400%
- AMI. Typically, those are a qualified home buyer, which is income-based for the affordable program.
- That is normal within these kinds of situations. All right.
- That's anybody on the left with questions. There's a motion in the public to move on I acknowledge it.
- Thank you I Mean we're moving really fast for us to be clear Anybody on the left with questions, please
- councilmember rough I'm just I mean, I'm not real good. I have no expertise at I
- you know, finance, real estate financing. But I'm having trouble understanding, please help me, please
- help me. Once a home is sold, what is gonna prevent those homes from then sort of latching or following
- the rest of the real estate upward pressure in the community and then those houses
- Becoming unaffordable down the road and if we have the income level restrictions Applied still in the
- future, but we haven't capped the ability of those houses to increase in value Faster than area medium
- income goes up Then it seems like we're gonna be losing them over time Yeah, and so
- Are you done with your question? Yeah, that's kind of so that's why we need to get creative about the
- way that we're structuring the the financing packages Because what the city has been doing is a deed
- restriction That means that the home cannot be sold to somebody who's outside of this income level but
- that also means that there are no conventional mortgages available to them and so Then they get locked
- into that house. They can't sell it and
- Can probably never buy it because we're not a mortgager And so instead if you look at a creative option,
- so if if I bought a home and and I and The city has first right of offer We would also likely have a
- shared equity agreement so if the market says that my Home is increased 20% in value We would share
- that equity with that
- owner and we may have a first right of offering which means we can come in and buy it and subsidize
- with our equity the the next selling of that house and so in these ways you're not suppressing the market
- you let the market do what the markets going to do but you still have homes that are available for people
- at less cost okay thank you thank you any other questions
- Councilmember Flaherty More questions a fair number. Thank you I'm also happy at any moment to consider
- postponement to our next regular session because I think there may be reasonable conditions involved
- in what comes next and lots of questions and we have another item that many people in the public are
- here for So at any point if the president would like to entertain that or someone wants to make a motion
- I just wanted to say that I guess
- One question is about our climate action plan that calls for establishing policies or ordinances supporting
- all electric buildings. It's basically the only climate goal, Bloomington climate goal compatible building
- style. So I didn't see that in the district standards, but is there or would there be a requirement
- for all electric buildings? That's it, that's the question. Thank you.
- I don't know that we have discussed that but it's very easy to do electric in residential And it was
- brought up during design and calibration of the street sections that that was an expectation that we
- would likely see that we likely did not need to accommodate gas lines within The lane structure as the
- city was not anticipating that that would be needed if this was an all-electric neighborhood So it has
- it has been discussed and there is an anticipation that that is likely a coming code change
- With the petitioners support a reasonable condition to that effect to make it part of the district standards
- Yes, thank you Councilmember daily Public comment, please There's a motion in the second all those in
- favor of moving to public comment say aye aye anyone opposed no anyone abstaining I
- That motion carries 8-1. We'll now move to a time of public comment. We've minimized this to 30 minutes.
- Again, that can be extended. What I ask you to do, because there's quite a few people wanting to comment
- on this, there's a sign-in sheet there so that we save some time. Sign in and then pass it on so that
- people behind you can comment. I also just general timekeeping, because it's only 30 minutes and there's
- so many of you and you have three minutes to comment, that's 10 comments. So if you're gonna say something
- that somebody in front of you said, yield the time so that we can hear from as many people as possible.
- All right, first commenter, take it away.
- Thank you. My name is Erin Reynolds and Island. I'm the housing solutions director with heading home
- of South Central Indiana. I like some of us are not real estate experts but I do work with within the
- homeless response system and affordable housing is a lot of what we talk about in our field. So I wanted
- to thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to see that the city is taking a step in rezoning and
- just you know
- in the right direction when it comes to affordable housing. So centering kind of who is all impacted
- by this choice and everything is our community. In addition to the system improvement work I do with
- my team in our region's homeless response system, I also supervise six street outreach case managers
- who work in
- Or with the unsheltered population and three case managers who work with individuals and families to
- divert them from homelessness So whether my staff are in the streets and camps doing outreach or preventing
- people from becoming own house My case managers run into the same problem, which is affordability forgetting
- from getting people to from the streets to a home We're struggling to find places that don't
- Require three times the income or income. That's three times the rent and for people struggling to maintain
- their housing We're seeing how deeply cost burden they are and how deeply or how thinly they are spread
- just trying to stay afloat So I wanted to take a moment to discuss the importance of affordable housing
- and impacts it has on the broader community because the decisions that you guys are making and the questions
- you're asking are really important and
- Affordable housing is just super necessity. So whether it's intended to be owner or renter occupied
- it makes a difference Housing costs are the primary driver of homelessness and hopeful has
- a great opportunity to make an impact in our field When housing is affordable people are less likely
- likely to become homeless and when they do they have a greater chance to rapidly be rehoused in our
- community single adults in our region region 10
- took them an average of 169 days to find housing again. When housing is affordable, people can better
- manage their other expenses. They can take care of things like childcare, healthcare, and food. They're
- less likely to spiral deeper into poverty and can work to attain broader goals than just surviving.
- When we succeed in preventing someone's homelessness, we celebrate for the moment, but you know, they're
- not out of the woods and we have to really take that into consideration. So, unaffordable housing means
- our neighbors will always be trying to catch up.
- And lastly when affordable or when housing is affordable people have a higher likelihood of breaking
- out of generational poverty through living in mixed incomes neighbor mixed income neighborhoods Where
- they have the opportunity for economic mobility and stability? Our case managers are struggling to find
- affordable family style houses and families are having to result to using smaller bedrooms and Being
- in resulting in areas like
- Living in areas where they're not and that's your time feeling sorry. Thank you. Thank you for taking
- the consideration Hi, thank you for offering public comment, I'm Anna green longtime resident of Bloomington.
- I'm very interested in the housing I want to applaud the city for partnering with nationally
- Known and recognized organizations who have been having success with incremental development I think
- that's the thing that I'm most excited about is that These organizations that the city is partnering
- with they're further down the road than we are and so they've they've already Sort of given us an opportunity
- to look ahead and maybe avoid some pitfalls that we might have
- Otherwise find ourselves in my specific interest in this is that I am one of the properties who might
- benefit from the city kind of losing a fear of more dense
- housing of more dense development downtown. So I have nearly one acre of property in Grandview Hills
- neighborhood on the east side, walking distance to the mall, on a bus line, walking distance to campus.
- I am an empty nester with a four bedroom, two and a half bath house that I cannot afford to downsize
- from. So what would be great is if I could turn it into a quad, sell three units, and keep my own. I
- have been talking, I've been
- I've been picking the brains of David Hittle and his staff. I've been picking the brains of folks at
- Habitat for Humanity. I've talked to Hopi. I really feel like at my property in particular, it won't
- change that much from the street side. Most of my property backs up to the railroad tracks and to a
- commercial residential, meadow woods, senior living facility.
- I think Hopewell is super exciting because here is this enormous property to be developed with intention,
- with support from national organizations who have been experimenting and succeeding. And if we can do
- that and kind of give ourselves an opportunity to reduce the fear about this kind of development, which
- let's not kid ourselves, this is absolutely urgent and critical to have more dense development
- Sprawling is not working housing is a critical urgent need right now. So I will contribute three more
- units To the city of Bloomington three more affordable units if this kind of zoning is allowed to move
- forward Thank you. Thank you Take it away Good evening, Chris Smith. I'm here in support of Hopewell,
- but I want to tell you a little story I bought a lot in Kirkwood in 2021 from my wife and I's retirement home and
- We started permitting in 2022. It took us a year and thirty thousand dollars to get a permit
- for a single-family house We're zoned MN. There's a historic overlay plus the Kirkwood overlay. There's
- neighborhood board approval historic preservation coa Then we wanted to change our wrap on our house
- from a manufactured stone to a limestone had to modified my coa and had to bring a sample of limestone
- and to get it approved and
- Which shocked me because I thought limestone was limestone We had to have multiple right away permits
- excavation right away Kirkwood right away Jackson Street right away Retaining wall permits every time
- we poured concrete. I had to get a street closure permit But it had to be an exact day in time and had
- to give them two weeks notice So I put in a request for five closings over two months and they said
- no you have to be this exact so we just started pouring early in the morning and
- I had to do a driveway bond a homeowner sign off a sewer and water application hook-on fee plus a letter
- from CBO given to you guys saying they're the sewer provider which was shocking a perpetual pedestrian
- easement a six-foot sidewalk I'm in a historic district. I tried to get a variance from a sidewalk down
- Jackson Street was an 18-foot unimproved road I got denied the variance and told at the meeting. Oh,
- by the way, it's six foot So I poured it and the next day I called planning and said I can't put my
- street trees in I
- So concrete in our neighborhood is obviously more important than street trees, and I really wanted street
- trees. I got a grass violation notice during construction, because I forgot to weed it around a stop
- sign. I got a erosion control violation when there wasn't erosion off-site. I got called in on it. I
- had to hire an architect, have multiple meetings. I had to have a street tree plan, even though I couldn't
- plan them. I had to have a site plan. And finally, I got a building permit. It took a year and $30,000.
- We need this, specifically so you can have pre-approved plans so people don't have to go through that.
- We had the ability to pull it off. I'm a civil engineer, I've been on the planning staff here, the planning
- commission here off and on for the last 15 years and it was still that hard. Please make this easier.
- And modifications that you aren't gonna do it. It needs to be thrown out and redone as form-based code.
- Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Michael Ginda. I am here to speak about Hopewell. In
- terms of affordability and from the perspective of a workforce
- I'm a member of the workforce. I work at IU. I've been here for I think 12 years now. I came as a student,
- so I've been through a lot of the housing issues that are being discussed today. One of the things I've
- been most concerned about with the Flintlock proposal in the PUD is the fact that the model is really
- tied to sort of this model buyer. You have to have 20% down in the proposal, which cuts out sort of
- costs like PMI. And I know that the representative from Flintlock said HOA fees are
- are being considered in the affordability equation, but when you look at the actual model, I think it's
- page 183, it's actually all zeroed out. So I believe it's because they don't really know what those
- costs are gonna be. There's not really a framework for what that HOA would actually be. And particularly
- the condominium units within the Faulkner design and the trillium units and things like that, they're
- going to have to require shared maintenance and governance for those types of units,
- Would make me believe that the condos in the Faulkner are actually going to be end up being apartments
- Or other units that are not going to be actually affordable even though they fall within the income
- guidelines I think there's a idea that you're going to have first-time homebuyers like myself with 20%
- down immediately without significant assistance from the hand programs which are really generous and
- But I think the terms of the other prospect of this is that equity sharing really is a sort of secondary
- tax on the person who needs assistance and is asking for help for buying. I'm not saying it's a bad
- model, but I think the conditions on affordability, being hinging on those programs, really speaks to
- sort of the idea of attainability rather than affordability. And I don't believe that the mortgages
- as outlined here for relative to space, it's cheaper for me to rent
- when I've looked at the numbers for myself. I'd save about $33,000 over seven years by when I run the
- numbers and run my calculations through the Fannie and Freddie savings, renting versus buying calculators.
- So I would really would like to also then point out that we need to have a way to evaluate the success
- of this pilot. I work in research, I do model evaluation. This is an overfit model for affordability.
- And so I would like to challenge the council to provide
- or means for independent evaluation of the success of affordability for workforce housing,
- for ADA compliance, for other people that are going to be potentially buying into this development.
- Thank you. Thank you.
- Good evening City Council. My name is Markay Winston and I'm here tonight to express my support for
- community efforts that expand access to safe affordable and high quality housing for families and members
- of our local workforce including educators and School employees who meet the needs of our community's
- children each and every day as superintendent of the Monroe County Community School Corporation I see
- firsthand how housing stability and affordability directly impact student success and
- Housing affordability also plays a vital role in our ability to attract and retain talented school employees.
- Teachers, instructional assistants, bus drivers, custodians, and support staff are essential to the
- success of our schools and ultimately to our children. I wholeheartedly support efforts to enhance affordable
- housing opportunities in our beloved community. What our city is building is not just a neighborhood.
- It is a vital part of the package that makes Bloomington a place where families want to put down roots.
- Public schools are both a reflection of and a contributor to the health of a community. Strong housing
- opportunities help stabilize enrollment. Affordable housing is a school issue. One way in which it is
- a school issue is in determining what level of mortgage a first year or early career teacher can actually
- afford within our community.
- MCCSE offers the most competitive starting teacher salaries in Indiana were actually number two out
- of approximately 290 school corporations Yet we have lost many talented candidates because they could
- not find housing that they could afford within our community Every one of those losses is a loss for
- our students Increasing housing options in our community with a mix of housing types and price points
- will be attractive to future educators who want to join MCCSE and
- The connection, it runs deeper than simply hiring. When families can afford to live in Bloomington,
- they enroll their children in our schools. As a public school corporation, the state funding that we
- receive that supports instruction is based on the number of students that we serve. Every new family
- that enrolls directly strengthens our classrooms. Student enrollment growth is critical to our future.
- Affordable housing is exactly the kind of investment that supports great schools The families we welcome
- to our community will diversify our workforce fill our classrooms and strengthen our education Our schools
- and our housing are not separate investments. There are two critical pieces of Bloomington's economic
- future I believe diverse housing options and a robust education system together can attract new families and
- We have welcoming neighborhoods paired with schools rich in musical, visual, and performing arts, STEAM
- programs, numerous college and career pathway opportunities, early learning, and a wide variety of academic
- and extracurricular programs. Safe and attainable housing, strong schools, and economic vitality are
- deeply interconnected. And the music starts playing. That's your time. Thank you. Thank you.
- I'm Paul ash the McDowell Gardens Neighborhood Association did meet finally and We did discuss this
- plan unit development and while we have reservations about overflow parking and congestion in general
- We already have that now we we have a more compact urban form and we're quite dense and this is a bit
- denser, but we have our minds open to
- these innovations. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Good evening, council. My name is Eric Spoonmore.
- I serve as president and CEO of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I'm here tonight to respectfully
- urge you to unanimously approve the Hopewell PUD. This vote is about more than a single development proposal.
- It's about whether we are ready to move from debate to action on the most pressing issue facing Bloomington,
- which is housing. For too long, our community has been caught in procedural back and forth over the
- Hopewell site. Meanwhile, housing costs continue to rise. Young professionals struggle to find attainable
- options. Families are stretched thin. Employers, both small businesses and major institutions,
- are competing for talent in an environment where the availability and affordability of housing often
- determines whether someone can say yes or no to a job in Bloomington. From the perspective of the business
- community, the housing shortage is not abstract. It directly affects workforce recruitment, employee
- retention, and whether entrepreneurs choose to start and grow their businesses here. Ultimately, it
- affects the long-term economic vitality
- of our city. Hopewell also represents something important from a development standpoint. For years,
- our members have told us that Bloomington's unified development ordinance can be difficult for smaller
- local builders to navigate because of its long, complex, and uncertainty associated with it. The Hopewell
- framework moves key decisions to the front end, creating clearer development parameters and
- a more predictable path forward. That matters because it opens the door for local developers.
- not just large national firms to help build this neighborhood and invest in Bloomington's future. It
- also offers a model as you continue conversations about meaningful UDO reform, which we very much appreciate.
- No single project will solve our housing challenges, but Hopewell is a meaningful step forward. It adds
- needed supply in a strategic location and signals that Bloomington is serious about creating more housing
- options for people at different income levels
- in life stages. A unanimous vote tonight would send a powerful message that our elected officials recognize
- the urgency of this moment and are prepared to work together to address it. The voters in the business
- community are ready to see progress, collaboration, and action from you all. On behalf of the chamber
- and our members, I respectfully ask for your unanimous support
- Hope well PUD. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry if I can just make a brief interruption I just want to make a
- Blanket comment to all of the commentaries to please remember if you are willing and able to sign in
- the reason why this Why we ask this is because the clerk's office does record your name and whether
- or not you support a legislation So it's another way to make sure that your voice is included in the
- record as well It's not a requirement But we appreciate if you do it make sure that we have you done
- correctly and your name is spelled correctly as well Thank you so much clerk Williamson Members of the
- City Council Thank you for lending us your ear tonight
- My name is Don Weiler. I'm a long-time Bloomington resident. And for context, my home is adjacent to
- Hopewell on 2nd Street. It's hard to get unanimous agreement on any one thing these days. I think, however,
- you would be hard pressed to find anybody that says that I really don't want housing to be affordable.
- For years, Bloomington has said that we want the folks who work in our restaurants
- and our shops and our hotels, our teachers, our firefighters, our nurses, to be able to live in the
- city that they serve. Every day, they contribute to the life and energy of Bloomington, and yet, many
- of them cannot afford to live in the community where they spend their working days. They commute in,
- they serve our city, and then they have to leave.
- because housing inside the city simply isn't within reach. There's many factors that influence the cost
- of housing that we can't control locally. Interest rates, the price of materials, national economics.
- But there are things we can control. Our UDO and our permitting processes significantly affect how possible
- it is to build in Bloomington.
- I'm thankful for the recognition by Mr. Hiddle and the Planning Department to recognize this and for
- the efforts that they're taking to address this on a longer time frame. The Hopewell PUD is important,
- not only because it adds housing in a walkable part of our city, but because it serves as a proof of
- concept. It demonstrates the thoughtful and deliberate flexibility that is necessary
- if we truly want to create more attainable housing within the city limits. This PUD is not perfect.
- Mistakes will be made, and critics will have plenty to point at. But perfection is not the goal. Action
- is the goal. Just as Julia Child didn't perfect Beef Wellington on her first try, first time ever,
- The ideas in this PUD will improve with each iteration. Bloomington is strongest when people from every
- walk of life can live here, work here, and participate in our community. Tonight, you have an opportunity
- to demonstrate your commitment to that future. I respectfully encourage you to unanimously move Hopewell
- and Bloomington forward. Thank you for listening.
- My name is Matt Gleason. I'd like to say that Hopewell South overall looks good. It seems to be a large
- improvement over the TRO overlay district that's currently on the map has a number of problems. The
- details are very well considered from multiple perspectives and they match a lot of housing policies
- that have worked in other similar cities to us. I want to say that there is kind of a large focus on
- ownership in this.
- Hopefully the next plats that are done after this maybe provide for renters a little more We've seen
- multiple housing booms and busts in my lifetime. So it isn't the be-all-end-all I appreciate that this
- PUD can be a model for future you do changes But I also hope that people don't kind of rest any similar
- changes in the you do on this in terms of its success or speed something I'd like to ask City Council
- and the admin and
- Consider for future PUDs Especially in the hopeful area would be social or public housing that can provide
- for the essential workers of the town And give them a you know a good quality of life in a home They
- can afford and that also checks market rates by virtue of being a cheaper alternative. Thanks
- Good evening, everybody. My name is Nathan Ferrer. I'm the executive director of the Housing Authority
- and our nonprofit affiliate Summit Hill Community Development Corporation Representing a nonprofit affordable
- housing developer. I strongly support the Hopewell planned unit development This innovative approach
- includes many of the strategies that we've been pushing for years that includes mixed income smaller
- lots pre-approved plans
- varied housing types reduce setbacks roads that prioritize people over cars and as well as permanent
- affordability These lead to reduced infrastructure and construction costs, which means greater affordability
- Long-term these will mean an increased tax base and more efficient community service of this land I
- agree that the PUD may have been misused in the past and that it should be used sparingly and
- But this development reflects exactly why the PUD mechanism was created to allow for thoughtful, innovative
- community design. We at Summit Hill CDC are already working on another remarkably similar plan that
- we hope to roll out by the end of this year. Part of my request is that you help pave the path for that
- by approving this PUD.
- We all understand that Bloomington faces a housing crisis and there's growing alignment within our community
- About what needs to happen to address that? The hopeful South beauty is a large step in the right direction
- I ask that you treat this request with the urgency that it deserves and hold a vote tonight Don't delay
- any longer And thank you for your service. Thank you
- This time just to make sure that everyone gets included. We have about five minutes left to public comment
- I would like to move at this time that we extend public comment by 15 minutes There's a motion in a
- second all those in favor signal by saying aye aye anyone opposed All right, that carries. We have 15
- more minutes and note that there's also people online. So, you know Take it away. Mr. Zodi
- council for consideration of the PUD for typical south. Oakwell is one of the most exciting transformational
- projects our community has ever seen, if not the most. Since its inception, there have been common goals,
- a forefront driven by the original master plan that many of us contributed to and talked about and had
- a lot of community input. These goals include maximizing the housing yield and a wide range of price points,
- options for rental housing and the ownership of the range of housing types. Making sure this new neighborhood
- remains aligned with the unique character of Wilmington and the neighborhoods around the site. And I
- was glad to hear from Mr. Ash earlier and get to know him. In order to do all of this, the consideration
- of PDD to maximize the capacity of the housing is critical. As someone who served in the last administration
- and worked intimately on the overall project,
- My major question and consideration along the way was always about the number of housing units that
- are possible on the site, and especially with these six acres. I remember being in staff meetings and
- people sketching out how many houses could be fit on these six acres. What can we do with the current
- zoning laws? And to see this idea and this concept take off, like a shot, with the initial important
- work the Rosso administration is doing,
- to redesign this is really exciting. It is a natural, necessary step in the process to see and talk
- about process. And this is the next natural chapter of what is happening at the Hopewell Project. It
- does require a shift in many years of policy, but it certainly seems well worth it. And all along the
- way, always thinking about what's realistic, do the numbers work, and can, let me tell you this,
- live, work, and stay here, and put housing for their families. So as a community health partner, CAEHG
- stands ready to help with this conversation. There are creative tools out there to help with mortgage
- financing for people who may not be able to afford that 100%. We may need to avoid mortgage insurance.
- And it was talked about earlier by a speaker. This is an opportunity, and I've heard it tonight, to
- help the police to do what it does very well, which is try new things.
- That's your time sir. Thank you.
- There we go. My name is Tina Peterson, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Bloomington
- and Monroe County and also of regional opportunity initiatives to see three organizations focused on
- ensuring that people and communities thrive.
- At the risk of dating myself, but to add context, I want you to know that I served on the committee
- established by Mayor Cruzan several mayors ago, almost 14 years ago, that first looked at the potential
- of what today we call the Hopewell site to bring much needed value to our community. Over the last few
- months, the community foundation has been engaging with stakeholders across our community to better
- understand our challenges and our opportunities.
- From everyone on everyone's list of our challenges in this community is housing. It's consistent person
- after person Organization after organization that housing is what constrains us most significantly in
- this community We are looking for right housing that will allow individuals that live and work here
- to thrive regardless of income level and
- Housing that will allow new employees to call our community home housing will ensure that that will
- ensure that tax revenue stays here in our community and Housing that will help to reverse population
- decline in our community The housing studies that ROI has conducted regularly in our region enumerate
- housing needs at every price point
- whether rentals or owner-occupied, and speak to the importance of providing missing middle housing for
- those seeking attainable, walkable, low-maintenance living options that primarily benefit young
- professionals, first-time home buyers, downsizers, I think that's a word, and working-class families.
- In our work, we've had the opportunity to work with entities focused on making housing more attainable
- and affordable and buildable.
- Through strategies like those proposed for the PD PUD we are here to discuss tonight. It's housing that
- serves populations We need to attract and retain and that is by design by design buildable by homegrown
- developers This community needs housing that both Needs the housing that both the seat the Community
- Foundation and ROI have been investing We are willing to do our part where we need everyone else to
- do their part as well. I
- It would seem that we are moving in the right direction and on the right path, but quite honestly, it's
- a path that we've been on for way too long. I started these conversations with people 14 years ago right
- on a committee. These conversations about Hopewell, even if it wasn't named that then, are
- no less significant today than they were then and that's unfortunate.
- We need we need to think differently and to innovate. I ask you this evening to signal your
- shared understanding Of that urgency and support the Peter. Thank you so much Good evening council,
- my name is Clark Greiner I am the interim CEO for the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation and
- I urge you to
- Support the Hopewell South PUD this evening the BDC believes in doing so will enhance the attainable
- housing Presently, there's a gap in our housing stock of the community Hopewell PUD will offer several
- strategies begin to cover the gap and make attainable housing much more of a reality and
- First, I'm here to express the support of the BEDC for the passage of this. We believe that the project
- represents a transformative opportunity for the community and our local industries and the broader regional
- economy. The Hopewell Project offers a diverse type of housing, such as tiny housing, ADU's, single-family housing,
- And from a business retention expansion and attraction perspective, housing is really where our jobs
- sleep and are a vital component and necessary to retain and attract the workforce, but to also bring
- the employers into our community. One of the big concerns that we have and we hear oftentimes is that
- We need to bring good paying jobs in our communities. Housing is a key component of that. The availability
- workforce is also a key element. The BEDC led initiatives and attainable housing is a very important
- component. And housing availability and price is a question that is frequently asked by visiting CEOs
- and existing CEOs and their site selection professionals when they're making a location selection.
- The Hopewell PUD pre-approved designs will begin to address the administrative cost to build and develop
- attainable housing in Bloomington. And according to the National Home Builders Association, 23.8% of
- the final price of a house is attributable to regulation. Expedite development processes offer predictable
- for professional builders and families, and the need for housing to help keep the cost lower
- and workers in our community. Given Bloomington's annexation challenges, the PUD encourages density
- by offering small footprints on smaller lots, which attract and are very attractive for first-time home
- buyers, and it helps keep costs low. The BEDC recognizes the Hopewell Initiative aligns with our strategic
- priorities, such as job creation for business attraction, retention, and expansion, and it's important
- to mention that the CEOs, again,
- and their senior leadership team take a lot of interest in housing. When we go on tours and take these
- site visits, that's one of the primary questions that they ask. They say show us where affordable housing
- is for our workforce. So we respectfully request a favorable consideration for this initiative and stand
- ready to assist in any way to advance its success. So thank you for your leadership and your attention
- to this very important economic development opportunity for Bloomington and our region. Thank you so much.
- Take it away. Good evening. My name is Ron Walker. I'm president of CFC properties and workforce housing
- LLC, both of which are cook group companies. And with me tonight is Dan Peterson, vice president of
- industry and government affairs for cook. We're here on behalf of cook to express our strong support
- for the establishment of the Hopewell South PUD. We're not simply in support of it. We're excited about Hopewell.
- We've been following the proceedings, have participated in meetings and discussions, and we're eager
- to see the development of owner-occupied housing at the former hospital site. Recently, in a small group
- session with nonprofit leaders, the question was asked about what are some of the bright spots in Bloomington
- right now? What are some of the great opportunities ahead of us? For us, the answer is Hopewell. How
- fortunate we are, how fortunate you are, to have this opportunity to redevelop
- Hospital into a new residential neighborhood focused on owner occupied housing To build homes that can
- be purchased at different price points to feature small lots traditional street grid layout walkable
- connectivity This is what Bloomington needs. This is what our community has been asking for and what
- a great opportunity you have in front of you tonight at cook we know the real challenges housing challenges and
- Exist in our region we hear it from our employees We hear it from those who we are recruiting for careers
- with cook That's why a few years ago. We committed to building houses We build houses we offer them
- to our employees first at our cost It's a zero profit program from cook. We use all local contractors
- our primary builder authentic homes is here tonight and
- We sold our 30th home about two weeks ago in Spencer, and we plan to build many more. I can tell you
- from doing this, timing and timelines are extremely important. There's plenty of time to work out details
- here, but we have to move on this now. The housing challenge in Bloomington is real. We should all feel
- a big sense of urgency to address it.
- And you have the chance to do that tonight. That's why we asked the council to address this housing
- challenge directly To not delay and to support the Hopewell South PUD rezoned by voting. Yes unanimously
- tonight Thank you for your time. Thank you Howdy I'm Greg Alexander I have a few criticisms of this
- specific design. The density is really good, right? I
- but the lane concept is bad. If we have to amend the transportation plan in order to have dense housing,
- if we need to invent a new street type that's 20 feet wide that doesn't have sidewalks, we should be
- hearing from a planner. It's just a street with no sidewalks, by the way. That's what it is. There's
- an emphasis on parking. 100% impervious coverage that pushes all the green space into an HOA is bad.
- An HOA is bad. It's a barrier to affordability.
- The dreams of how this is going to be financed and built, I don't think they're realistic. Overspecifying
- individual designs instead of making good zoning code that anybody can use is bad. Using a PUD is bad.
- PUDs politicize housing. We all saw that last week or two weeks ago when the mayor excoriated you in
- a press release because you didn't bend your rules. Like, PUDs are a slow process. Fundamentally, this
- isn't about getting housing built. This is about assigning blame for the fact that housing isn't being built.
- The case for this PUD is that it is an experiment. There's no experiment. We know these houses are gonna
- be extremely desirable, and the people who live there are gonna be so happy to live in them. But is
- this gonna lead to anything? Is this gonna convince people? You know that's not true. You know the moment
- you put zoning on your agenda,
- Which if it's going to be in September, oh my God, right? If you're going to have a line out the door
- like this line is going to look like nothing and you're going to be hearing from a bunch of old people
- who don't think young people deserve housing. You're going to be hearing from a bunch of people who
- hate housing in general hate all the new development. You'll be hearing shearing and jeering from the
- audience. It will be people will be attacking you.
- every time you go outside, are costing you about this. You don't want that result, but if you're gonna
- build housing, if you're gonna actually do zoning code that's more than just one and a half blocks at
- a time, you're going to endure that process. And I think you're doing this one and a half blocks instead
- of enduring that process. That's my fear here. The thing is, the people who hate all new development
- are a tiny minority in this town. And you guys were elected to do a job.
- passing piecemeal PUDs will not do that job. It will just lead to more PUDs. PUDs require that our certified
- planning staff has to put political concerns above their job. That's bad development policy. That's
- not a good way to address affordable housing. It's corruption, and I'm saying that formally. Like, the
- mayor is pushing on you to do this well faster than your usual process because she's using the slowest
- possible way to do it.
- the one where she gets to decide zoning law for every block and a half in the city. That's ridiculous.
- We need good zoning code for the entire city, and we shouldn't make it dependent upon who has a good
- relationship with the mayor. It should be open to everybody that owns property and everybody that wants
- to develop. Thank you. Thank you. Take it away. Hi, I'm Jen Mayer, and I
- Respectfully, we all like affordable housing like I get it I'm wondering if we could go on to the reason
- that the the flock cameras the part that was buried in this meeting and is the very last thing we're
- talking about I would respectfully ask if we could get to that in a timely manner We all know we want
- affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you Thank you All right More you go ahead. Go ahead
- I didn't see you there, go ahead. So a lot has been said about the buzzword of the year, affordability,
- but right across the street from Hopewell are the Seminary Point apartments, and they're the most affordable
- apartments in the area. People are living in them right now, and every single one of those people was
- told a couple weeks ago that they will be forced out of their homes in July. I understand these buildings
- are owned by the county, something to do with their disastrous convention center, but the buildings
- and the people living in them are in this city,
- right across the street from Hopewell, and they are my friends, and they will not be able to afford
- what you are making. Why are you letting the county destroy meaningfully affordable housing in Bloomington?
- And if you don't like that framing, which is fair, I understand, it's incendiary. What will you do to
- get the seminary point leases renewed, empower these tenants to decide their own futures, and stop the
- county from destroying the affordable housing we already have? Thank you. Thank you.
- I'm Jack Baker resident of the McDole historic neighborhood district. I've been a I'm a Bloomington
- I type in here for 57 years. I love Bloomington Over the years. I've served on numerous City Commission
- says give back for what the city has given me and
- During my tenure on the Plan Commission under the Hamilton administration, I gave a newspaper interview.
- I was asked by the Herald Telephone what I thought should be done with the now Hopewell property. I
- said it should become a neighborhood like those north and south of Prospect Hill and McDowell Gardens.
- It should all be single-family housing. That was anathema to the administration. It said that my idea
- was crazy and unworkable.
- multiple large multi-story buildings with townhouses to buy or apartments to rent and construction by
- one or two large out-of-town developers. As a gesture to the neighborhood, it allocated one small section
- on the south boundary across from McDowell for a few single-family homes. After many years have passed,
- a new idea has developed under the Thompson administration.
- section dedicated to single-family housing in the same small area With the difference of zoning in place
- and a pick list of housing types and by right building It offers the density of cities demand ease of
- obtaining building permission relatively low buy-in and the opportunity for local contractor participation,
- I hope you'll pass it I believe it will prove the best pattern for development and hope well and
- I don't know if mayor Thompson plans to develop this pattern more widely and hope well, but I will encourage
- her to What would be more appropriate than extending the fabric of Bloomington community across? Hope
- well creating an exciting new neighborhood of single-family homes nestled among traditional neighborhoods
- of the city Thank you Thank you Good evening, my name is Jason Bell. I'm the executive director of the
- Builders Association and
- I wrote a whole bunch up, but I think most of it's been covered tonight. So I just wanted to say that,
- you know, we all know the challenges that the community faces with housing. Housing costs are on the
- rise. Construction costs remain high. Financing is complex. Families struggling to find attainable,
- family-friendly housing. Hopewell, I think, is a direct answer to that, those concerns. I get phone
- calls every day. I literally...
- At least every day if not twice three times a day from people in the community that work here, but they
- can't live here This is this is the answer the building association supports the mayor supports this
- This is what we need for our community. Thank you for your time Thank you. We have time for one more
- comment Ready I'm gonna
- Try to keep this pretty short and simple. I've worked with Cook, or my company's worked with Cook, as
- well as we've right now currently working with Chris Smith over at Harmon Farms. And we talk about this
- word affordable, okay? I'm gonna tell you what it means to me. It means the average working family can
- afford this house. In working with both of those, we have created those. I know that with Cook,
- Most of those homes were around $60,000 below market value that they were being sold at. In Harmon Farms,
- we just sold a house for $290,000. Two bedroom, two bath, two car garage. It's something people can
- afford that are in the working class.
- When I look through some of the pricing that I've seen in some of this, they seem to be covering a wide
- variety. It seems to be realistic with their numbers when I look at it. I say, yes, I think it can be
- built for that. That can really happen. And I'm excited to find something that would reach out to the
- people that are working, that are paying taxes, that are doing things in this community, that are the
- vibrant part of the community.
- Actually have an opportunity to find a place here that's affordable to live. I think that Like any project
- it's going to have great things. It's going to have not so great things but overall I believe it's a
- good thing that the mayor is trying to do here to put some affordable housing in the middle of downtown
- Bloomington
- Thank you so much, unless there's any motions that should conclude our time of public comment.
- I hope he's, Councillor Satsburg, sorry. I do have a motion, but it's nonrelated to public comment.
- Should I go ahead?
- And I'm so let me just make a quick comment then I'm sorry for the people online and we'd set the time
- for 30 minutes Folks extended it. There's no motion on the floor to extend it. I cannot make motions.
- So I would like to move to postpone further consideration of ordinance 20 2606 to our next regular session
- on March 25th There's a motion in a second any discussion Please councilmember Piedmont Smith
- Yes, while I am generally favorable of this proposal and I hear the overwhelming support for it, I think
- there are still some critical details that are not clear. And there have already been two reasonable
- conditions that have been mentioned by colleagues, and there may be others that we might want to impose
- in order to make this a better project. And certainly there are a lot of things that
- I don't quite understand how they're going to work once this is built. So we really do need to take
- our time with this. We normally would do two readings. And so it would be highly unusual to pass this
- on the first reading, which is tonight. So I would encourage my colleagues to have another meeting.
- Where we could between now and then get some of our questions answered and bring forward some reasonable
- conditions. Thank you Thank You customer sasper I guess I'll go ahead and explain the reasoning for
- my motion to especially because there are so many public commenters who encouraged us to just vote on
- this tonight I I guess I first want to say I'm a little frustrated That we were we started out this
- presentation being threatened with greater costs in order
- Unless we unless we vote tonight because this councilmember Piedmont Smith said it is unusual for us
- to only deal with the PUD in one reading I appreciate that there are lots of steps to a PUD but the
- petitioner knew this when they began going down this road and Council is one of the steps and I consider
- it a responsibility of council to and a responsibility of myself as a council member and
- Do my due diligence on this and it is doing a disservice to this community if as a council representative
- I do not Ensure that that this is the the best way to do things Okay, and and you know, we have a lot
- of people here clearly is one of the earlier commenters said that that are here about flock and this
- idea of Trusting the government to do the best thing and if this was a private petitioner, I
- I don't think anybody would have been standing up at that mic today saying hurry up and push it through.
- And the only reason why people were is because well, it's like our local government and we trust them,
- right? And it's not that I'm doubting my trust in our administration, in the staff that have worked
- on this project, in the RDC, but I think that as another branch of the government,
- I mean, I think that we have to do extra diligence to cross our T's and dot our eyes because we are
- monitoring ourselves right now and there have been lots of recent examples not local examples per se
- but at state and federal levels we're monitoring ourselves in terms of government is not working out
- very well and so the least I can do is make sure that the documentation matches the intent of the project and
- That moving forward regardless of who is in the seats of the administration The the project is going
- to move forward as intended in terms of affordability in terms of Building structures in terms of how
- it's supposed to serve Bloomington the people who live here and the people who want to live here. Thank
- you Thank You councilmember Rallo Thank you
- I generally support this petition and I appreciate the work that's been done, but I also support the
- postponement to consider reasonable conditions I I Will suspend judgment on those specifics until until
- my colleagues bring forward But I respect their ability to do it and I'm a little bit puzzled by the
- assertion that we should simply approve this without a modest process of a couple weeks, which is standard
- practice and
- And we've been waiting, by the way, for this for a couple of years. So we're not to blame in terms of
- delay. This has been going on for some time. It's not our fault. It just landed in our lab. So it's
- an important PUD. It's permanent. It's permanent. And it's significant. And it's vital for our community.
- And it deserves due consideration. Thanks. Thank you so much. Other comments?
- Okay. Um, seeing none. Um, all those in favor, uh, sorry, sorry. Where, where's there? It came as you
- know, as a, as an angel from the sky. There's no pending motion on, on the floor right now to postpone.
- So I think there was a motion motion to postpone in a second.
- Know but the the motion to postpone typically is made when there is a main motion. So Yes, I mean what
- one alternative at this point would be to make a motion to move ordinance 2026-06 to to second reading
- or there may be other motions that may be appropriate to Thank you so much, Lisa
- Please come councilmember Sasberg knowing that then I will withdraw my motion and instead make a motion
- to move ordinance 20 2606 to second reading at our next regular session on March 25th Just does that
- meet the qualification attorney later, I think that works. Thank you All right. There's a motion to
- move to March 25th. Are there any comments on?
- I'll just make one that I think at some point it was mentioned that Ali is not able to attend at the
- 25th, that I hear that correctly was this, and that's correct. Okay, so I mean that consideration, and
- I don't know if it's appropriate to ask questions at this time. So just that, I mean maybe just something
- for us to consider is that whether we want to postpone, yeah, so.
- Think usually we only postpone things for one meeting and then if it needs to be postponed the next
- time then we should Advertise that we're not going to talk about it that we're going to postpone it
- But given the number of public commenters tonight and that nobody got there on zoom. We might just want
- to hear public comment even if There are questions that would remain unanswered By Ali's absence. I
- also though think that if we manage to submit a
- Questions prior than perhaps staff that are available on that day would be able to pass forward answers
- Any other questions or comments Any other questions or comments All right seeing no questions or comments
- we will move to a vote so all those in favor of
- Okay, it's been requested that we do a roll call will the clerk please and call the roll Yes, Stalzberg,
- yes Piedmont Smith. Yes, do you look? No, I'm sorry. No daily. No Rallo. Yes, rough. Yes, Rosenberger. Yes. Oh
- That motion carries six three. So we will discuss this again on our March 25th meeting. Thank you all
- very much for your time. All right, we will now move on to items for second reading and resolutions.
- Are there any motions? 2026-04 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only please.
- There's a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed will the clerk please read
- Resolution 2026-04 a resolution establishing immediate transparency limits and a public review process
- for automated license plate reader technology in Bloomington the synopsis reads
- This resolution sponsored by council member sorry requires the chief of police and office of the mayor
- to brief the common council on the city of Bloomington's automated license plate reader a LPR program
- with specified information provided in plain language writing. It also calls on the office of the mayor
- to impose immediate pause on any expansion of the LPR program until the briefing is completed.
- Finally this resolution states the common council's intent to consider adoption of an ordinance to establish
- durable rules governing acquisition and use of a LPR technology by the city of Bloomington Thank you
- very much and because I wrote this I will hand the gavel over to councilmember daily I move resolution
- 2026-04 be adopted second All right, you're in charge sorry to interrupt all right
- Thank you very much. I don't need to hold this. Would you like to present as the resolution sponsor?
- Yeah, just super quickly. I wrote a bit about this in our last packet, so I don't think any of this
- needs to take too much time so we can go to public comment and wrap up. But I think I'd like to just
- frame the purpose and the approach of this resolution.
- For those who wouldn't be familiar, ALPR systems I think are becoming increasingly common across the
- country, often deployed with what people would say are legitimate goals, which is like things like recovering
- stolen vehicles, assisting in
- Missing-person cases generating leads and serious crimes helping public safety agencies operate more
- efficiently and yada yada And I think that those are real public goods and they deserve to be acknowledged
- But the central question before us is not whether public safety matters Of course, it does think the
- question is how we pursue it what capabilities we build and
- what risks we accept, what limits we place on ourselves when technology expands the reach of institutional
- power. I think generally that we should avoid a common trap in technology, which is this sort of idea
- that any potential benefit, no matter how small, is sufficient justification for something. When we're
- dealing with tools that collect large amounts of data of any sort, or particularly location-linked
- information about residents and visitors, many of whom are not suspective of wrongdoing, it might help
- sometimes cannot be our governing
- standard. Benefits should be demonstrated, not presumed, and they should decisively outweigh the civil
- liberties, security, and governance risks that are created by the system itself. So the resolution before
- you tonight is intended as a first step toward responsible governance in this space. It does three things.
- First, it establishes a shared premise.
- that technologies capable of collecting large volumes of location-based data require a higher level
- of transparency and democratic oversight than ordinary municipal tools.
- It initiates a structured process of inquiry. It asks for a public briefing and written material so
- that the council and the community can understand the program as it exists today, its scope, its cost,
- its retention policies, its access controls, its auditing practices, and its data sharing pathways.
- In other words, the due diligence required to make informed decisions in daylight. I will note here
- that several members of the public submitted to us a sort of shared, a joint written report noting multiple times
- where they have sought information under the Freedom of Information Act and that that's been obscured
- or not accessible to them in certain cases. And third, it signals the council's intent to develop durable
- and enforceable rules governing ALPR and similar technologies in Bloomington, rules that would apply
- regardless of vendor. Now this point I think is quite important. I know that right now the sort of reaction
- is to a particular vendor and I have particular thoughts about the particular
- particular vendor, but we need to think in a broader sense that it's not just maybe a concern with this
- vendor, but about the use and governance of this technology in Bloomington sort of at all. And so to
- me, the deeper question is whether institutions are prepared to govern technologies that will only become
- more powerful and more common over time. And so I think
- That's this is sort of the the first motion. I mean sort of first step here And it's a spirit in which
- this resolution was drafted and I look forward to the discussion All right, thank you very much before
- we move to questions do we want to introduce amendment one first up because it was just a Small part
- that kind of plays into the rest of it doesn't make a huge change But I think an important one. So before
- we move to discussion Councilmember Piedmont Smith, would you like to introduce your amendment? I
- Yes, I'd like to introduce amendment one to resolution 20 2604 Amendment one just gives a six-week deadline
- for the mayor's administration to Give us the public briefing that is outlined in the resolution Thank
- you any questions about amendment one councilmember Stossberg
- I think this is a question for President Asari about Amendment 1. Because of spring break, our next
- regular session is already like three weeks away. So in terms of space on the future agendas to present,
- does that six-week time framework? Yes. Great. Thanks. Wonderful. Thanks. Any other questions on Amendment
- 1 only? No? Seeing none. All right. We can then move to public comment.
- just the amendment giving us the six-week timeframe for the Response from the administration. So would
- anybody like to speak from the public on it? Just amendment one only you'll have an opportunity to speak
- on the broader resolution in just a moment Amendment one. Yes. Okay. Come on to the podium. Thank you.
- You have three minutes, please state your name and take it away My name is Robert home
- I think amendment one makes eminent sense I think any deadline is better than no deadline And I certainly
- leave it to the judgment of the council and the and the administration what deadline is appropriate.
- Thank you Short and sweet. Thank you any other comments in chambers Anybody online looking to make it
- a comment on amendment one All right, no, thank you very much I
- Any councilmember comment before we move to a vote on amendment one? Councilmember Stossberg I'll also
- echo the public commenter and I appreciate councilmember Piedmont Smith putting putting a deadline on
- it. It's good idea. Thank you Any other any other comments All right, can we just do a voice vote on
- this one or do we have to do roll call Roll call roll call. All right. I
- Clerk Williamson, would you mind taking role, please? Oh, oh We don't either yeah Councilmember Sarsburg.
- Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes, Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes daily. Yes Rallo. Yes rough Rosenberger Flaherty
- And that passes eight to zero Rosenberger councilmember Rosenberger was out of the room. All right.
- Thank you. So now we're moving back to The broader resolution as a whole resolution 2026 dash Oh for
- any councilmember questions for councilmember, sorry We're speechless No questions. Oh I would like
- to hear from the public. So well then any questions
- Okay. Well then, perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for. It is my distinct
- pleasure to introduce public comment on resolution 2026-04. Please come up to the microphone in an orderly
- fashion. No pushing, no shoving, no name calling. Be kind to your neighbor. Remember to sign in, state
- your name, and you have three minutes. Do we have 30 minutes set aside for this? Do we know? We don't
- have anything.
- You guys are good. All right, thank you, whenever you're ready. All right, thank you for your time.
- Hello, I'm Sam Dixon, a local worker here. Just had some comments about the flock issue in general and
- about the resolution. First of all, thank you, Council, for bringing this forward. I think it brings
- transparency that has been direly lacking with the application of this technology for a considerable
- amount of time. I appreciate the deadline being added.
- it's a good first step towards understanding where we even at. The public has not been able to access
- the contracts. The public has been received with obfuscation and stonewalling by the mayor. And generally,
- we don't get a sense of trust. Do you really think we would expect a contract, a piece of paper, to
- protect us from unlawful actors like ICE? These fascists are shredding up
- other pieces of paper like the Constitution. They are destroying our rights. I do not feel safe with
- the presence of flock in town. I think that's a very common viewpoint. As a person of color, I know
- this is used to track me, to assess political dissidents, to clamp down on our civil liberties. I think
- it's terrible. So I think step one, we need to cut the contracts. I know that's not up to you, counsel.
- That's up to the mayor.
- Step two, we need to ban flock and similar technologies. I would like to see us go there. I would like
- to see us go further and to see a binding ordinance, which I appreciate. I feel that there's an effort
- from the council and from the public in that direction. Just a couple more things, details. About the
- rolling 30-day retention period of video, this is one of the obfuscations that we get from the mayor's
- office commonly. Oh, we don't save the data, it's 30 days, and then it's deleted.
- Technically, that's true. That's because of storage capacity. Video data is extremely large and difficult
- to store. There is no limit on what is scraped through the video data through AI programs. There is
- no limit to what the AI can turn out of said video data. They can profile many things about you. That's
- derivative data that's way easier to store. Who knows where that's being used? Flock is simply a purveyor
- of this data to whomever
- is a high bidder or whomever is cozying up to the Trump regime and it's an easy cash grab for fascist
- dollars. So I think we need to march towards banning the technology in general. The existence of this
- technology is a threat to our safety. This type of data should not be taken at all. It cannot be entrusted
- with law enforcement and it cannot be entrusted with our leaders at many levels. Thank you.
- Thank you very much. Next member of the public, please sign in and state your name. You have three minutes.
- Really close. Oh, there we go. My name is Susan Brackney.
- Appreciate your willingness to consider putting limits and public review on a LPRs in Bloomington License
- plate reading is one level of invasiveness If you look into what the condor pan tilt zoom cameras are
- able to do It will curl your hair. I think there are a couple in that contract. Where is the mayor?
- I wish she had stayed for this. I hope you're around I
- This is important. This issue is bigger than just that camera. Focusing on Bloomington's use of one
- system or one company in isolation is not enough. If you use flux technology alongside facial recognition
- software, you've got yourself a live real-time dragnet. City councils like you in New Orleans, Austin,
- and San Francisco
- put laws in place to ban the use of facial recognition software by the police. And in New York, the
- city police leadership barred officers from using facial recognition programs, too. And in each of those
- cases, they all found workarounds, like asking buddies in different jurisdictions to run facial recognition
- searches for them. So that's not helpful.
- The advancement of these technologies has far outpaced our ability to establish proper guardrails and
- protections If our experience is anything like that of those other municipalities Flock security could
- end up costing the city millions of dollars in legal fees Because it could be argued that combining
- these technologies in these ways violates our rights
- Under the Constitution and I know that these cases have been going to court. So that's another thing
- to think about Thanks again for being thoughtful about this very important issue appreciate it Next
- member, please sign in and state your name for the podium you have Yeah, you know what? I'm trying to
- say you have three minutes. Thank you testing
- My name is Joffrey Livingston. I am a resident and I work here in Bloomington. I want to reiterate that
- transparency about these contracts should be a given. Transparency should be an inherent part of the
- relationship between people and government. And there will be many criticisms levied against FLOC and
- ALPRs in general tonight.
- But I think the reality is that we must, and once again, I also want to reiterate that the council does
- not make this decision. The mayor who was present in this room and is no longer present in this room
- for just this item alone is the one who makes this decision. But we must divest from this contract.
- Fundamentally, this is about our city.
- and its compliance with increasingly militant, increasingly weaponized technology and its use against
- citizens. From 2024 and now forward, our history as a city and further will be marked by collective
- resistance to American imperialism and the tech billionaires that fund it. Bloomington is historically
- a progressive cultured town full of art, ideas, community,
- life, but now our country is at war again, and we are good at football. So that means, among other things,
- an increase of military training, increasing military facilities being built to train, all of this down
- a funnel that who knows where we'll go, but this is just one small part of that siphon that
- can suck all the life out of our city and distract from the rights of our people that we should be focusing
- on. The contract belongs in the shredder, and Mayor Thompson belongs in this room. Thank you. All right,
- thank you very much. Just one quick note, while our commenters are speaking, please do try to refrain
- from reacting during their comments, because you do take away from their time, and that might be a little
- unfair to them, no matter how much you agree. I appreciate that. We're actually going to move to check
- on Zoom quickly to see if we have any Zoom commenters waiting. We have one waiting. Perfect. OK,
- thank you. Go ahead whenever you're ready. Please remember to state your name if you feel comfortable.
- Hey. My name is Pat Wall. I'm a Bloomington resident. And I don't have that much to say, because I'm
- on Zoom. I'm not in the room. It's a little different.
- But this technology is just so cartoonishly evil on its face. Like this is exactly the technology that
- we all know is bad. When we think about a totalitarian society, we see it in our science fiction movies,
- whatever. This is that technology. And so I know why the mayor had to leave. It's because she is back
- at home twirling her mustache.
- and tying up James Bond over a shark tank, because that's the kind of people that use this technology,
- and yeah, that's what I got to say. Thanks. All right, thank you. Next commenter in the room,
- thank you. Try now? Okay, wonderful, thank you.
- Could I have my time reset? Thank you Hello, my name is Sarah Owen I am the community engagement coordinator
- for the Exodus refugee immigration office here in Bloomington Exodus is here tonight to make clear to
- the City Council and to the mayor that we are asking for the flock contract to be terminated in full and
- With regard to this ongoing discussion about the contract, we ask you to consider everyone's investment
- in the matter. Firstly, Flock is a private company selling you a product so they can make a profit,
- and that is the extent of their interest in this matter. The language on their website is simply a matter of PR.
- They state that FLOC does not share data with ICE. That does not mean that ICE or the federal government
- does not have access to that data. In fact, there is already a clear and established pattern that that
- is happening across the country and following these comments today, Exodus will be providing documentation
- of that pattern to the council. The BPD is tasked with public safety and therefore advocates for the
- use of FLOC cameras for the sake of investigating crimes. However, we respectfully contend that they
- may not be considering the larger ramifications.
- To be clear, we empathize with the objectives of maintaining public safety, but the more that our city
- invests in data collection, allies with profit-driven companies, and fails to take a firm stand on our
- community's basic rights, the less likely our immigrant community will feel safe to utilize police for
- when they themselves are victims of a crime. In essence, continued use of tools such as the flock cameras
- erodes trust between immigrants in the community and public safety officials.
- Meanwhile, Exodus and organizations like us, we are your frontline experts on how legislative decisions
- at the federal, state, and local levels are impacting Bloomington's immigrant community. Your experts
- in immigration are telling you that these cameras pose a direct threat to the safety of our immigrant
- neighbors.
- The people in power at the federal level have already demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the law
- and civil liberties and have shown that they will not hesitate to run roughshod over people's privacy
- for the sake of scoring political points with their base. Furthermore, they have shown unfettered hostility
- towards the targeting of immigrants and people of color, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status.
- Flock cameras were initially installed in the summer and fall of 2024 and we implore the City Council
- and the mayor to consider how different the landscape is now, barely a year and a half later. For any
- public official who believes that there is a safe or secure way to continue this contract with Flock,
- we will not accept passive wording or language about compromise to sue the conscience of our community.
- We do not believe that such measures will meaningfully protect our immigrant neighbors.
- With the passing of SB 76 expected to enter into state law by the end of this week, what are you going
- to do, not if, but when, the state comes to collect flock data to track down the next five-year-old
- child and place them in a detention center, or perhaps the child's father, whom they may never see again?
- Please don't look away at what is happening in this country. Protect immigrants and protect our community
- with clear, decisive action, and eliminate this contract.
- Thank you very much. Next speaker at the podium. You have three minutes. Hello, my name is Niyasika
- Swamy, and I'm here to ask you to divest from this FLOC contract. Some things that I have read on the
- ACLU website is that they have been collaborating or coordinating with ICE.
- Also, some other concerns from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is that these kinds of systems enables
- surveillance of protesters, which is our right, according to the Constitution, that this regime, the
- current regime, is trying to clamp down on our peaceful protest.
- That also allows for biased policing and discriminatory searches, weaponizing surveillance
- against reproductive rights by monitoring license plates and their travel, where they're going. This
- company also has in the works, they have drones available on their website.
- and we know what drones are doing right now over in the Middle East and potential for hacking from,
- you know, bad characters, international, you know, other countries. Also, I just want to remind everyone
- that something that Ben Franklin said, one who gives up a little bit of freedom for a little bit of
- safety deserves neither.
- And from what I see that what's going on in our country right now, I don't think it's the working people
- that need to be surveilled. I am abiding by the Constitution. And I think the surveillers, who's going
- to be surveilling them? And who's going to be keeping up with what they're doing with our personal
- information? We already know.
- that Elon Musk and his little doggie boys went in, they have all of our information, our social security
- information, everything they know. They know everything about us. Even they're turning over voting rolls
- to DC. So and then now we're gonna have them monitoring what we're talking about on the streets. And
- my coming and going, if I'm going around Bloomington,
- We don't need to be surveilled. We're not the ones that need to be surveilled. Thank you. Thank you
- very much. Next speaker, please go ahead. You have three minutes whenever you're ready.
- Maybe now. Hey Okay, no problem. My name is Robert Holm Thank you to the council members, especially
- council members. Sorry for introducing this measure and council member Piedmont Smith for the amendment I
- I'd like to echo the sentiments that are in both the preamble of the measure and which Council Member
- Saray shared with us verbally. I particularly think that the standard that the benefits, although they
- may be real, should decisively outweigh the cost to civil liberties, especially privacy, is
- a very appropriate standard, and I do not believe that it is met in this case. If I had one particular
- suggestion,
- for the measure, although I would be happy to see it adopted with or without this. Some of the particulars
- which the city and BPD are asked to report on in, I believe, section four, such as the retention period
- of the data and the access controls to the data, I would love to see the city and BPD required to report
- on that distinctly for how those apply to the city and its agencies, including BPD, how that applies to FLOC,
- and how that applies to Flock's other customers because I think it exposes some of the concerns that
- have been expressed by the other commenters if we had to provide separate answers for, for instance,
- you know, the city retains our data for so long, Flock retains our data according to what they say for
- so long, and Flock's other customers who may have access to that data retain it who can say how long.
- What access controls are being put in place by the city versus by Flock
- versus by anyone else who may legally or through hacking have access to that data. I think that clarifying
- that in that way, it could be very insightful. I also appreciate what council members are, I said, that
- it's important not to lose sight of crafting durable rules for ALPR and FLOC's other technologies such
- as facial recognition in general due to
- the specifics of one vendor and one current situation, but I do think that it's important to consider
- the urgency of the current situation as well. With that in mind, I would ask the council members to
- please vote in favor of this measure, to please continue to pursue this issue diligently, and say that
- I personally would be very happy with both a termination of our contract with FLOC specifically, and
- with very stringent measures or an outright ban on technologies like this in general going forward.
- Thank you very much. Next public commenter, please remember to sign in and state your name, and you
- have three minutes. Okay. Hi, my name's Kevin Pence. I live and work in Bloomington. I'm here in support
- of this resolution. However, I want to be known that these proposals for simple transparency and mild
- restrictions are just scratching the surface. These contracts with FLOC must end immediately. I'd like
- to give you all a clear picture of the type of company the city of Bloomington, Monroe County, and IU
- are all partnering with.
- At the end of this last year, a YouTuber by the name of Ben Jordan and a team of technology researchers
- discovered, among other things, that 60 flock condor cameras were streaming directly to the open internet.
- This admin portal required absolutely no credentials to be accessed. It was not hacked. There was not
- a vulnerability exposed. The portal was open for anyone and everyone to see. There you could find all
- 60 cameras worth of live feeds as well as the past 30 days worth of 24-7 video recording. This vulnerability just
- Was just one egregious example among many that flock failed to discover until the public pointed it
- out in December of last year a PR style email went to the Bloomington Police Department from Garrett
- Langley the founder and CEO of flock safety starting off with Flock has never been hacked ever Quote
- the email then goes on to claim that concerned citizens are using public record requests as quote a
- weapon against law enforcement
- It's all nonsense to deflect from their negligence and lack of any accountability I don't trust flock
- safety or any tech bro company for that matter with this type of AI enhanced searchable database of
- our whereabouts There's there be these the mere existence of these cameras in an is an encroachment
- and an imminent threat to our civil liberties and That is only exacerbated by the passing of Senate
- bill 76 or
- The implementation of government surveillance in Bloomington is step one of compliance with fascism
- in advance, which is why the city should end these contracts right now. Thanks. Thank you very much.
- Do we have any commenters on Zoom? I'm just going to quickly check before we move on. Is there anybody
- waiting on Zoom to comment? Yes, there are two commenters. OK, we'll go to one comment on Zoom, and
- then we'll come back to hearing chambers. Thank you for your patience.
- All right, on Zoom, whenever you're ready, go right ahead. Hi, can you all hear me? You're good to go.
- Hi, my name is Kathleen Paquette. I am a longtime resident of Bloomington. A lot of people are bringing
- up a lot of really good points about flock, so I won't belabor them. But I would like to just share
- a personal story. I live on a block where there is a flock camera. For the last approximately year,
- this camera
- has watched my comings and goings every single day. It has tracked the license plates of all of the
- vehicles I share with my family. It knows what my dog looks like. We're living in a time where our current
- administration has declared anti-fascists as domestic terrorists. As someone who's involved in activism,
- particularly comfortable with having my cars and my face and my daily whereabouts tracked and logged
- by a company with very little accountability over who has jurisdiction to that information. There are
- so many really, really good, really important arguments about collaboration with ICE, but none of our
- rights matter right now.
- And for our city to be allowing the placement of these cameras that just continue to watch us every
- single day in our current climate is just so scary. And I think it should be scary for all of us.
- That said, I really appreciate this resolution. I really appreciate the work that you are all doing
- right now. And I hope that the mayor is listening and I hope that we can keep this moving forward and
- just completely cut this contract. Thank you so much.
- Thank you very much. Coming back to here in chambers, next speaker. You may begin whenever you're ready.
- You've got three minutes. Good evening, council members. I'm Liliana Young, House District 61 candidate
- and a proud city commissioner. When it comes to issues of surveillance and data gathering, there is
- no reason why the city never gave its residents an opportunity to weigh in on this before such a program
- was put in place. It is the lowest
- possible standard the city could achieve. But here we are now living in a Bloomington directly tied
- to the expansion of the surveillance state, directly tied to the scraping and selling of personal data,
- directly tied to the aiding and abetting of agencies like ICE, which have brought nothing but pain and
- death to communities across this nation.
- So since we weren't given an opportunity to weigh in on this ahead of time, I hope you are hearing us
- tonight that we do not want these systems in our city, that we don't believe the benefits outweigh the
- costs, and putting limitations in place simply isn't enough. Ultimately, the contract must be cut. Thank you.
- Thank you very much. Coming back here in chambers, you have three minutes. You may start when you're
- ready. Thank you. Hello, my name is Sereza Knox. I'm a local drag performer here in Bloomington. I came
- here five years ago loving this city. The fact that Flock is here has made me hate it. And where's the
- mayor for us to ask our questions? She left the room the second that this was brought up because she
- is the one that signed that contract.
- She is the one that allowed a dangerous tracking system into our city to keep paying attention to everybody
- who has done nothing wrong. We are here to live. We are here to work. We are here to love and have our
- families. And we are being stripped away from them. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, the elderly,
- ripped away from their families, their homes, their schools.
- And we are sitting here debating about whether or not this contract should be here. It should have never
- been allowed to begin with. And the biggest question I have is whenever FLOC is gone and the next company
- just like it comes in, is that one also going to be allowed in? And then all of us have to come back
- to this room and tell every single member of this city's government that we don't want it here.
- that we never wanted it here, but nobody cared what we thought to start. I am telling you now, whether
- you cared before or whether you still don't now, if it becomes your family, is that the time that you
- care? When it becomes your friend, is that the time that you care?
- Because if you do have the passion and the care and the love for this city that you spoke about at the
- beginning of this entire, what, three-hour meeting, then you would push Flock out and you never would
- have signed that contract. And the mayor would have never left this room the second that it came up.
- Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll have one more here in chambers and then we'll go back to Zoom
- after this next speaker.
- You have three minutes. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Ryan. I am a researcher at IU I just if it's
- okay, I can anybody who supports canceling this contract raise their hand Okay, that's kind of what
- I thought I think that's what we all thought So I was hoping that mayor Thompson would be here to hear
- this but if she wants to expedite the Hopewell neighborhood then maybe she should just Cancel this flock
- contract so we don't waste time
- Discussing something that's objectively a violation of our privacy I think that she wants a legacy to
- leave which is admirable and maybe her legacy could be the mayor that said no to bringing fascism into
- Bloomington and Let's just one last thing. I want to say a little joke maybe but I think that in the
- context of this federal administration
- we can draw our own conclusions from flock. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it's
- literally called flock, maybe it's a fascist duck. So, thank you. All right, thank you very much.
- We'll go to, I believe we have at least one more commenter on Zoom. Yeah? Paul Russo, I'm going to allow
- you to repeat yourself. Thank you. You have three minutes.
- Hello. Paul Rousseau, Bloomington resident. I support a complete prohibition on all ALPR technology
- in Bloomington. My only contribution to the discussion is to remind or inform everyone that anyone who
- uses a cell phone is already under surveillance by the US security state. Edward Snowden explained to
- everyone in 2013 that the National Security Agency has a policy that was summed up by the phrase
- Collected all and by all they mean all the metadata So these license plate readers would simply augment
- what has already been going on Thank you Thank you very much we'll come back here in chambers next speaker
- you may step up to the podium Make sure you do sign in and you have three minutes. I signed in You're
- amazing Excellent. Oh, my name is price. I'm gonna keep it short because I I think you all know what
- of people here think, you know, flock is bad. If you want to fight fascism, you don't want to give fascism
- the infrastructure to exist. But of course, I also want to note that this mandated inquiry, this mandated
- period of information from the mayor is not enough. I think the city council should do a lot more in
- using its statutory power to ban something like this from ever becoming an option in this town.
- That's it, thank you.
- Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. You may step up and begin whenever you're ready.
- Hi, my name is Daisy Dinn. I agree with the stuff that all the people who spoke before me said. We don't
- need a tool of tracking our movements. This surveillance technology is, we don't need that. And it's
- not secure. We know that
- Okay, the cops shouldn't have access to this data, but no one else should have access to the data either.
- And it's not just the cops, it's ICE, it's, yeah, all sorts of independent and institutionalized forms
- of fascism that have access to this data. Yeah, and we really should be encouraging the mayor, yeah,
- to not be doing stuff like this.
- So whatever power that the City Council has I say yeah use it. Thank you Thank you very much next speaker
- here in chambers you may step up you have three minutes Hi, my name is Graham Baker. This is my first
- year in Bloomington and I've already seen just how amazing this community is and the
- The prospect of these automated license plate identification cameras, it really scares me, and I think
- it should scare all of you. I'm sure it does scare a lot of people here. I mean, of course, the ties
- to ICE are incredibly terrifying. Giving them this much information about everyone in our community, I mean,
- I'm scared. I'm scared for me. I'm scared for my friends of color. I'm scared for my friends that are
- international students. And I'm scared for all of the people that have lived here for years. I also
- wanted to address... I can understand from a certain angle why this might seem appealing. I mean, crime
- is always something to be worked. The prospect of being able to decrease crime like this can sound very
- enticing, but when it comes at the cost of
- All of these eyes in in the city that that's not a cost that we should be willing to pay I support and
- I think I know I'm far from the only one that supports any and every step that can be taken to cancel
- contracts with flock and Prevents any of this technology from existing in Bloomington Even if you think
- this isn't something that will affect you and it absolutely will even if you're not concerned about
- your privacy What happens if?
- you're living your life, and the sorts of things that you're doing, like the places you're going, are
- starting to be considered suspicious. Even if you are innocent, if you've done nothing wrong, what if
- you're driving to a protest, or even through an area where a protest was committed? What if you're going
- to see... I'm sorry. Any... Yes.
- very easy for all of this data about you to be collected, and the fact that your license plate could
- even be misidentified, you could be painted as guilty of something you didn't do because the system
- didn't flag you correctly. This could happen to anyone here. I'm really passionate about this issue
- to the point I walked more than 40 minutes during a thunderstorm to come to this meeting, and I'm sure
- I'm not the only one,
- I think that just speaks volumes to how important it is that we really and truly try and get FLOC and
- any other automated license plate identification out of this community. Thank you so much.
- It wasn't on that time. You have three minutes, thank you. Okay, thank you. My name is Olivia Soto.
- I'm a sophomore at IU, and I'm originally from Fort Wayne, so, you know, love Indiana. And I really
- appreciate, you know, your attention and this long meeting and just being here and everybody else being
- here. I was in the hallway for a little bit, so I don't know exactly if this topic was brought up, but
- the one thing that does concern me with any surveillance, like mass surveillance cameras,
- is who runs them. And as we've seen with the Epstein files, you know, there are people that exist who
- look for very horrific material and of children of people and try to get their hands in every single
- large corporation. So just like, you know, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, they're all,
- you know, billionaires are very high up people.
- And who's to say that the CEO or the owners of these large surveillance companies are not also involved
- in that community of people who look for these horrific things of children and young people, especially
- as a female student at IU. It just concerns me that these companies could be affiliated with people
- like Epstein. So that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you very much.
- Do we have anybody waiting on Zoom? We do. We have four hands raised right now. OK, great. We'll take
- one more from Zoom at the moment, and then we'll come back here in chambers. So on Zoom, you are free
- to unmute yourself. And you have three minutes. Hi, everyone. Hope you can hear me. My name is Paul Meyer.
- I'm not gonna speak about the impact on minorities or constitutional and civil rights violations caused
- by the cameras. I think because those points have been made and will probably be made by others. Instead,
- I wanna focus on how these cameras affect people who don't worry about mass surveillance or immigration
- or otherwise support their use for law enforcement. Mainly, these cameras are incredibly and demonstrably
- insecure. As a previous commenter mentioned, you can find videos online that not only show their security flaws,
- but that give instructions on how to access them. There is no two factor authentication in most of these
- cameras that have been tested, meaning they have less security than your personal email. So what does
- this mean? Anyone with basic technical ability who can follow instructions can access information such
- as live camera feeds, historical data tied to vehicle and in some cases face identity, and no information
- about government departments that use the system such as tracking every police squad car. This means
- that such access could get
- anyone the ability to stalk others, including those they know personally or in public life. It could
- also allow them to target police officers or simply avoid areas where patrols may be active. Flock has
- been documented being unresponsive to providing security patches when vulnerabilities have been identified,
- suggesting that they are in the business of information brokering rather than security. So I would ask
- that you look into these known issues yourself, consider the risks associated with this wanton mass
- surveillance,
- and gauge the level of accountability that this government holds when it's wielded against its citizens.
- Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll come back here in chambers. We're going to start doing in every
- other for now since we have a line on zoom as well now. So you may go next. You have three minutes.
- Would I be able to have my time you said okay. Thank you. So yes, my name is Nicholas Heller and I know
- this Meeting isn't necessarily about flock. It's about Was it a RPLs in general? and I know that
- it is possible that we could use a company that uses this technology perfectly and ethically and honestly.
- But as we've seen, people get greedy and it doesn't always work that way. But even if it was used in
- a perfectly ethical way, I just don't think that the potential for it to be used badly significantly
- outweighs the potential dangers like yes,
- Being able to find stolen cars or keep people accountable for traffic violations could be helpful, but
- it's not worth it in the long run. I also wanted to talk about the potential effects on the broader
- United States and world. I know some of these systems use AI, and
- Data centers for AI have a significant pull on electricity and water in the cities that they are in,
- which causes a lot of price raising for electricity and water for homes around there. And it sometimes
- steals water so people can't even, you know,
- get a proper flow through their faucet. And I just think that it's important to note that the decisions
- we make in Bloomington could have an effect on the broader community and humanity as a whole, and I
- think that's important to note. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll move to our next commenter on
- Zoom, please.
- Name's Eric. I just thought I would share my experience with a flop camera. I was driving back home
- to Bloomington a few months back from northern Indiana, and I was flagged by a flop camera with an errant
- report on it due to a clerical error stating that I had no license and that I never had a license actually,
- it seemed to say. But as a result, I was pulled over by no less than four state troopers with no violent
- history. I have no record of violence.
- So you can imagine how this might turn out for a targeted individual. After about 25 minutes, they did
- let me go. They let me go because I had a passenger who they said had no problem with their license.
- So they let her drive, but they told me that they would arrest me the next day in Bloomington if my
- story of having a license ended up not being true. So anyway, that is my story. Take it as you will.
- Thank you for sharing next commenter here in chambers. You can go whenever you're ready. You have three
- minutes My name is Matt Gleason. I Wanted to start by saying there's no privacy preserving way to do
- mass public surveillance but if the city wanted a Way to do that. I feel that the city should have taken
- the responsibility for Conducting it in-house with their own cameras their own servers and put the power to
- of the system and the responsibility to steward the data and the surveillance in the same hands with
- stricter you know and accountability to the city and citizens and City Council as far as data use data
- retention and what is done with it. I know there's an argument for these things for use to gather evidence
- for use in criminal cases but I feel that if we wanted that power we should
- do the work to produce that power of sales rather than outsourcing it to a company that cannot be trusted
- to protect our privacy and be accountable to us. Thank you very much. We'll go back to our next commenter
- on Zoom, please. Hi. This is Casey Green. I know several of you, you've heard me comment in the past.
- I'd like to come from a different perspective, which is that I think this is a good first bare minimum
- step and the impacts could not be, you know, overestimated. But I'd like to introduce the question of
- what requires us to use the cameras? Like, let's say we can't cancel the contract because city council
- can't have that impact.
- It feels like we're in a sunk cost bias situation here. I would rather pay for cameras that we require
- to be dismantled and stored in a storage unit than deployed. Is there something in the contract that
- requires us to deploy the cameras? And if there is, that begs a very different question. So I would
- say I would fully support this.
- But I would also support us being more creative. And if the mayor would like to continue paying for
- cameras that we have dismantled and stored, then let her account for that expenditure herself. All right.
- Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. You have three minutes. Thank you.
- Hi, I'm Allie Sigelnik. I live and teach and study in Bloomington.
- I do really appreciate the resolution once again as that first step towards transparency And given that
- the mayor left I want to talk to you as the council more generally about surveillance And I also do
- want to take a few seconds of my time to remind all of us that if the mayor did leave because she didn't
- want to Listen to us talk about it while it is unfortunate. That doesn't mean we don't have power That
- means we have so much power together that she can't even look at us talk Anyway
- Not only do we need transparency, we need to divest from flock entirely and think critically
- about surveillance at large. As Council person Azari opened up discussion of this resolution with ALPR
- and other forms of surveillance
- are most often they're advocated with in terms of public safety. And I want to remind all of you that
- every time public safety gets brought up as an argument, we need to be really critical of safety for
- who and who is supposedly being safer, who is being protected by this.
- We know very well that when it comes to flock and many many other surveillance and policing measures,
- they do not increase safety They actually increase harm and violence to many and practically all of
- us And the only effect on safety in a positive way in quotes is the feelings of safety for the most
- marginalized among us
- And then the most direct harm and violence comes on the most marginalized, specifically with flock,
- as always, black, brown, trans, disabled, immigrants, and more, and all of the many people in our very
- town that occupy multiple of those categories all receive the most harm and are already affected by
- the flock cameras and the other forms of surveillance we use. So while I appreciate
- I appreciate as well that the resolution applies to more vendors than flock because as other people
- have pointed out Other companies other programs while they may not be as cartoon cartoonishly evil as
- flock They still have the ability to do very similar things and lead us to very similar scary places
- So since again since the mayor is no longer in the room with us and all of you are I urge you as council
- members to take any hesitancy towards flock specifically towards the specific use of cameras and apply
- it to not just new forms of surveillance but the forms of surveillance that have become very normalized
- to us as Various studies individual accounts and time and time again It has been proven that those do
- not increase safety for the majority of us and actually increase harm
- So again, thank you so much. Thank you very much. We're going to move back on over to Zoom for our next
- Zoom commenter. Hi, my name is Lindsay Badger. I've lived in Bloomington for 20 years and raised kids here.
- I appreciate the resolution and I also want to figure out how the city can follow with the most immediate
- and simple direct action to actually terminate the contract. And we have precedent for this. Our community's
- desire for the flop contract to end is not unique. We have seen similar contracts end around the country
- and in our neighboring states. The town of Evansville near Chicago
- had a community response with pressure like this, broke their contract, issued a cease and desist to
- FLOC, and interestingly, FLOC reinstated cameras after the contract was canceled without the city's
- approval. Evanston as a city then put black bags and tape over FLOC cameras throughout the city, and
- this feels like a measure we could take with immediacy. Thank you. All right, thank you very much.
- Speaker here in chambers you have three minutes. Thank you Hi, my name is Omar white Long-time Bloomington
- resident. I want to echo everything that everyone said here. I don't support flock I don't think we
- should think we should cut this contract. I appreciate that the resolution is more wide-ranging than
- just flock because
- another vendor could come by with something similar, and I think that this is something that does need
- to be handled at a wider level. However, also I think there is urgency to get transparency on this contract
- and frankly to cancel it. There's so many different reasons to not support this contract that people
- have talked about. I agree with all those. One I want to reiterate is the insecurity
- of Flock, these cameras have been shown to be hackable, to be insecure, to be available on the open
- internet. I'm a software engineer in my day job, for whatever that's worth, I find that appalling, that's
- like basic, it seems like Flock is not doing basic due diligence with their products to develop them
- in a way that would be secure, regardless of the privacy violations, which are egregious, but the fact
- that some guy was able to go with some security researchers and access these cameras, I believe somewhere
- in Atlanta,
- on the open internet, that's appalling. Come on, no basic security whatsoever. Ben Jordan was the YouTuber
- who's put out a video where he worked with these security researchers to find these exploits. I would
- encourage you all to go look for it. If you haven't heard about it or seen it already and watch it,
- it is very egregious how insecure Flock is in addition to the privacy implications, which I think are
- also egregious.
- Thank you Thank you very much. We'll move back on over to our next speaker on zoom. Okay, wonderful.
- Thank you. Whenever you are ready Nicole Myers you can unmute yourself and speak now Hi, I'm Nicole
- I just wanted to say thanks to all the council for staying for this even though the mayor left I think
- a lot of us came
- mostly to talk to her. It feels like a lot of preaching to the choir. So I really appreciate that everyone
- stayed so long to hear their constituents speak. I appreciate the things that some of the council members
- have put out publicly about FLOC to help educate everyone and give your opinion about it. I appreciate
- what the council president said about, you can't misuse data that doesn't exist. So just the more data
- we're collecting on our community, the more likely we are to have it misused in the future.
- And also just, I've talked to a lot of my neighbors about FLOC in general to make sure they know what's
- going on, people of all sides of the political spectrum, and nobody wants it here. So that's all I have.
- All right, thank you very much.
- Next speaker here in chambers. Oh, yeah, that's not going to work. There's the smaller microphone. Give
- it a try. You can try to pull the other one down. No, go ahead and try the other one. I'm sorry. It's
- got to happen. OK, hi. My name is Kylie. I'm a professor here at IU. I'm a grad student. I don't have tenure.
- You know, I teach a lot of feminist philosophies in my class. And flock really just fundamentally does
- not align with any of the sort of things that I teach in my class. And unfortunately, repetition is
- a really important part of learning. So I am going to repeat some of the sentiments that have already
- been shared more than once tonight. I would also just like to say there's several students sort of teaching
- this course.
- We've sort of discussed the topic of discussing ICE. And I know Flock says that they have no sort of
- ties to ICE. But if we use our critical thinking skills and rubber brains together, we can sort of connect
- the dots there. And it's really alarming when professors and faculty members are afraid to broach a
- topic out of fear of losing their job or being penalized for a topic that is
- very incredibly important. I use a lot of feminist literature in my class. We talk a lot about Audre
- Lorde, so I just wanted to share a quote from her. When we speak, we are afraid our worlds will not
- be heard nor welcomed, but when we are silent, we are still afraid so it is better to speak.
- You can see I'm shaking a little bit up here. I didn't plan on speaking, but this is a very, very important
- issue to me. This is my first time ever coming to city council meeting. I've taught two classes today.
- I've attended two classes. I'm tired as shit. It's 946. We talk about reproductive justice on Wednesday.
- ICE and FLOG, these are very, very much tied to reproductive justice issues.
- Directly tied to forced separation from children and their families. There's limited health care in
- these ICE detention centers. There's a lack of conformed intent and historically tied to forced sterilization
- and it's not going to take long if it hasn't already happened now. Flock and other mass surveillance
- make it easier for ICE to abduct people off the streets. The mayor met privately with Flock. Again,
- not here, but can meet privately with Flock.
- Very interesting, but has not publicly committed to end Bloomington's policies. And their $250,000 contract
- for already over 40 cameras. ICE relies on mass surveillance like FLOC with and without a warrant to
- attack poor and immigrant communities. The only way to ensure ICE cannot access their surveillance data
- is to stop collecting it all together. Thank you, this is bullshit, good night.
- Thank you very much. We'll move back over to Zoom. Do we have another commenter? We are no longer anybody
- in line on Zoom, so we'll go back here into chambers. Thank you very much for your patience. Very good.
- Hello, my name is Seaforth. I'm a... We need the microphone on for Zoom attendees to hear.
- Is there a happy middle ground we can find with the microphone height? Yes, you're good. Go ahead. Hello,
- my name is Seaforth. I'm a long-time Bloomington resident. I've already spoken before the council before
- at a previous meeting about one of the flaw cameras being directly over my front porch, and y'all had
- mentioned in that meeting that y'all remember our points. And so I'd like to focus on a slightly different
- one, which is to
- circle background to our earlier discussion about Hopewell Commons, about accessibility, and about the
- fact that we have a real struggle right now in our community of folks leaving it. And the reason why
- I want to tie it to Flock is the idea that this security theater, this apparatus, it has
- a tie-in impact to forcing people away. When folks look at Indiana or Bloomington as a specific location
- to move to or to stay in during these trying times that we are going through right now, this is an aspect
- of that that they look at. We can get everything else right in our community, and I've been to a couple
- of different meetings now trying to give input on
- the zoning or on the transit corridors, like the idea of changing college and Walnut, and those steps,
- those things make an impact in bringing folks into our community, right? But if we fail on an aspect
- like flock, that erases everything, right? The idea that you can have folks who would otherwise be looking
- to be here,
- But when they realize that, oh, I looked up Bloomington, Indiana, and in the news cycle is some abusive
- flock that comes up, like many of these other communities are having right now, like mentioning Atlanta,
- Georgia, or some of these smaller communities, where local officers have used flock to track ex-girlfriends.
- When somebody looks up a community,
- and they see that the surveillance technology is present and that it is being misused or that it is
- being used exactly as intended by the folks who own these companies, which is to roll out operations
- like ICE is doing, like it has a downward impact. It permanently affixes in the minds of people that
- this city has compromised essential values
- of freedom. And so when I think about IU as an example, where they are constantly in the news cycle
- for steps they are taking to curtail academic freedom, or of calling in state troopers to drag people
- out, or having drones over protesters following them to their cars. That is all people think about IU.
- Thank you. Thank you. All right, next speaker here at the podium. Go ahead, you have three minutes.
- All right. I got inspired by a bunch of these folks. Wonderful. Oh, I'm sorry. I just got inspired by
- a bunch of these folks here to speak up about what's going on. Oh, I forgot to say my name. My name's
- Akhil, and I'm a student here. And I just want to ask you something. What kind of precedent are you
- trying to set here? And so far, what I've seen,
- that the mayor not being here sets a precedence the precedence of cowardice it sets a precedence of
- Capitulation to capital it shows that you don't that you just don't care about the civil liberties of
- like the residents here and as The blue dot one of the few blue counties in this state I think that
- it's your responsibility to show that you y'all have a spine and
- that y'all are willing to stand up to civil injustices, to this Trump administration, to fascism. So
- I just wanted to say, what do you think you should do to show that you have a spine? And I want you
- to just think about that and to please, I implore you to be a role model to other counties in this area
- and in other states
- to fight back against these civil injustices. Thanks. Thank you very much. Do we have anybody waiting
- on Zoom? Anybody else raise their hand on Zoom? All right, we'll take it back here to chambers. You
- have three minutes. Thank you. Hi. My name is Dean Bolstridge. I am a freshman here at IU, and I've
- been here for pretty much my entire life. And I would just like to reiterate a lot of the stuff that
- we've already heard.
- urge you to take as much action as you can as with the motions that you have already put in place with
- the the transparency the urging of transparency with these cameras is very valuable as well as as the
- president has stated about how it is important to properly implement technology like this
- I would like to urge the importance of taking as much action as possible right now, as all of that would
- be very valuable if they were not already here. The cameras are already in Bloomington, and as we've
- heard from that Zoom caller, are already taking negative effects. And I just think that that is really
- horrible that we were not able to take this along
- egregious process to properly implement things as We should be able to and Yeah, I urge you to take
- as much action as possible and In your power and I'm really really sad to see that the mayor is not
- here to hear all of this. Thank you All right, thank you very much next speaker here in chambers, please
- step up you have three minutes Thank you very much
- Hello everyone, my name is Benjamin Arrington and I'm serving running to serve as your next prosecuting
- attorney for Monroe County Benjamin Franklin as I'm fond of the name Once said that those who are Those
- who would give up their essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
- nor safety
- And when I think of flock cameras and I think about every time you step out of your house and you drive
- your car, you're being supervised, we need to say no to flock. I wanna thank the council for staying
- late to listen to all of these public comments and I wanna thank all of the people who are here to support
- their voice and to let the elected officials know that you care and you're here to speak.
- So power to the people. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you for everyone. And let's be a bright
- star to be a blue dot in our red desert. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Did we have another
- speaker here in chambers? No? Doesn't look like it. OK. Anybody on Zoom with their hand raised? Have
- we reached the end of the line? Any last takers? It's OK. All right.
- So we're done with public comment. Thank you all very very much for sharing your insights and your passion
- I Know we really appreciated hearing from all of you. So thank you very much. So now we're going to
- move to Councilmember comment councilmember Zulek question All right. Do we have a second? Second.
- All right. We have a motion to call to question. Is this debatable? I think not
- So I guess we take a vote on this now right if we call to question we just vote Clerk Williamson, would
- you mind calling the roll? Yes, sorry, yes daily
- Yes Rallo Point of order this is a Calling the question without debate on the resolution Right, we're
- voting whether or not we're gonna vote right now, okay. All right. I appreciate the clarification then so
- Call to question councilmember. Sorry seconded it. So we're voting on calling to question Call the question
- then we have to vote Do I never write to that's what call the question is It's not debatable yes for
- the yes, I support the resolution That's
- May I change my vote then? So what are we voting on? I think there was a motion to call the question
- and that's being voted on at this point. I moved to call the question. We're voting on calling the question.
- Madam Clerk, may I change my vote then?
- I've never experienced that. So I don't know enough to say no. Can we just restart the vote? Yeah, I
- think that would be the best option. Yes, let's restart the vote. Thank you. We did that the other week
- where some members changed their mind and we re-voted. So let's start the vote from the beginning again.
- Councilmember Stossberg. Can I just clarify, because I think that there's some confusion up here. I
- believe that we need a two-thirds majority to call the question. Is that correct, Council-Attorney Layner?
- Roberts for this Because I mean it's basically saying we're stopping debate and we're gonna vote on
- the ordinance right now without any time for councilmember comment So that's what we're voting on if
- we vote. Yes, then we're not gonna have any councilmember comment
- Any further discussion we're just going to vote on the actual resolution and if we vote no Then we want
- to have some kind of a comment. It is a two-thirds vote required to adopt Thank you. And so it's a two-thirds
- majority needs to approve Voting right now without additional opportunity for councilmember comment
- So we asked what happens if it doesn't pass
- Then then we can have debate like we could have closing councilmember comments, for example, okay So
- on the table we have call to question, so we're going to vote on that now That is what we're voting
- on whether or not we're going to vote Thank you. All right councilmember P. Monsmith. No Zulik. Yes.
- Sorry. Yes, Daley. Yes, brah. No rough. No Rosenberger. Yes
- Yes Salzburg no So it fails five to four if I have that correct so then we Move to bait final comments.
- I'm going to enforce our rule that we never enforce which is we have seven minutes total if that's If
- we're ready for that we have do we have a seven-minute timer I
- Five and then two five and then two for follow-ups. So it's a seven total councilmember Stossberg. I
- just really I wanted to have an opportunity to comment because I feel like that gives respect to the
- many many people who
- came out and commented. So I at least wanted to say thank you all for coming out and commenting and
- expressing to us your thoughts on that. And second, I wanted to take just a minute to talk a very short
- minute about my personal evolution on how I feel about FLOC. Because six, seven months ago, I really
- appreciate how several commenters kind of had that
- That you know in my mind it became a scale of benefit on one side and consequence on the other so six
- seven months ago I was like, well, I think the benefits are there and then that slowly started to shift
- and and it has shifted most dramatically recently with I think it's SB 76 requiring local law enforcements
- to cooperate with with federal immigration officers and and if
- I had confidence that our federal immigration officers were actually acting as responsible law enforcement
- officers who were protecting the rights of individuals, then maybe that would be okay, but I don't have
- confidence in that right now.
- Benefit consequence shift has you know been slowly changing But that was one thing that it just kind
- of pretty immediately like pushed me over the edge because we can't share it if we don't have it and
- it makes everybody less safe, so I appreciate getting the chance to say that because you know I've responded
- to a couple emails that a couple of things because I'm liking I'm I'm learning about this issue and
- I feel about it is shifting and I feel like that that has been a dramatic like few months of change
- and evolution in terms of understanding security issues I love that our software developer over there
- pointing out security issues because I Also have lived. I've been married to a software developer for
- 20 years So that is just a regular thing And so I just I really appreciate everybody coming out and
- and sharing their viewpoint. So thank you very much Thank you
- Thanks, I appreciate everyone staying in the late hour and I really appreciate you all speaking out
- in support of civil liberties So many good comments this evening had it quite an impact on me actually
- Remembering such things as the Patriot Act which this council opposed back in 2003 and just this steadily
- normalization of government secrecy erosion free speech dissenters being targeted all that contextually
- is important and
- So we're essentially living in a society where total surveillance is the goal and It is real that is
- the hallmark of the totalitarian state So to whatever extent we can push back we have to do it I Don't
- want to live in a digital panopticon. I don't think anyone should So I appreciate this council resolution my
- Our council president sorry his resolution very well thought out wonder if it goes far enough I think
- that the case has been made tonight that we don't need this we don't need flock cameras and we should
- think of defunding it and So that's what I look to is the next step. Thank you Any other council comment
- down this end councilmember Rosenberger
- I don't always tend to talk a lot because I think we have all been here a really long time So it gets
- harder to find it useful in the end. I Love what a lot of you said and I agree that this next step needs
- to be an ordinance and not just a resolution we have a long list is getting longer of a history with
- this administration that
- Doesn't necessarily do what council intends we have ordinances that aren't really getting followed already
- So I think a resolution is a great first step and it's clear that this is what the community wants and
- we should just push it forward to make it More real. Thank you. Thank you any other council member comments
- council member Stossberg
- I'm sorry. This is my second two minutes But I feel like I would be remiss to also add something that
- I didn't hear tonight that I want to make sure that I Go on the record as supporting and what I didn't
- hear was residents saying we're scared that our police department is misusing this data because I'm
- did I hear that a little bit I I feel
- some trust in our police department that they are not misusing this data in terms of the procedures
- and protocols that they have to go through within their department in order to get it and that's the
- part that is you know, but like I said the consequence of having to cooperate of not having secure cameras
- like outweighs that but I just wanted to like I support our officers in their intentions around this
- technology that is problematic any other council comments
- Councilmember Flaherty and then councilmember Piedmont Smith right after that Yeah, just briefly also
- to say thank you to folks for speaking up for being here for emailing us contacting us I think reiterating
- this is a step. It's a next step in the development of durable rules that can be well crafted Information
- gathering is part of that. I think it's really important for us to that step and especially do it formally with
- Request the information from the mayor formally from the police chief formally, which are their statutory
- obligation to provide to us As when we request that information in fact in my six years of service I
- think this is the first time we've gone through the step of using a resolution to formally
- request information Because the structure and the details of it are important in that way. So I don't
- think that's the end I think it's the next step in the process to developing local rules, which are
- the council's responsibility And a legislative purview. So, thank you
- I really appreciate everybody staying late and sharing, especially your personal experiences and your
- different perspectives on the flock cameras. I have already come out publicly a month ago against the
- flock contract. I'll just read a couple paragraphs from my letter to Mayor Thompson on February 12th.
- As local elected officials, we have many responsibilities, including to uphold the civil rights of all residents
- hold criminals to account, and support an environment in which people feel secure. Meanwhile, we live
- in a country where Department of Homeland Security agents and agencies have both individually
- and systematically violated free speech rights, used violence to intimidate and kill protesters out
- of all proportion to threats to their own safety, ignored legal due process, and sown fear throughout
- hundreds of neighborhoods. It is in this context that I write to you regarding the city's contracts
- with Flock Safety,
- For automatic license plate readers and other security camera systems, collecting license plate data
- and or other individually identifiable data puts our residents at risk, since there's no way we can
- guarantee that data collected by a third party will not be misused, nor can we guarantee that the security
- of this data won't be compromised. FLOC safety in particular has a poor record in these areas. And then
- I give various examples, some of them that were mentioned tonight, where FLOC has been
- bad actor So I I mean I agree I agree with my colleagues that we need more information about our contract
- in particular I'm very skeptical that that will change my mind as far as my opinion That we need to
- end the contract But I do appreciate councilmember. I'm sorry writing a very
- Well thought out resolution as a first step and and we will have further steps after this. Thank you
- All right, thank you very much now we're gonna move over to councilmember rough has a quick something
- I just want to say not only did I really appreciate hearing all the comments from the public I also
- enjoyed hearing the comments at the end of the meeting here from my colleagues and
- this resolution and about what we might do next and I will always just for future reference I will always
- vote for more opportunities for councilmembers to make comments if they have something to say and I
- want to thank councilmember sorry and councilmember Smith, but councilmember sorry has some real expertise
- and background in this general area of technology use of it and misuse of it and
- So when I when he very early on Made it clear that he was taking interest in in taking an action for
- the council or sponsoring an action or council I had a lot of confidence in in what he would he would
- do and what we'll do next. So, thank you
- Thank you all so much council members and to the public for being here, for staying here. Again, we
- moved pretty quick, generally speaking, but thankful for your patience here.
- One thing that I'll note is, I think, the broader context, I think, in which all of this is happening.
- I think there were a couple of comments that noted, for example, that we live in a society where me
- having access to your telephone number, I can violate a lot more of your privacy than I might be able
- to with an ALPR system. Okay, so we're talking, we're not overreacting here to one type of technology,
- but to me, there's a broader question here, which is,
- Right now...
- We're also living in a time where there's something like 300 new AI apps coming onto the market, like
- commercial market, every single day at the moment. And cities really cannot keep pace with the pace
- of change in technology. And I think what concerns me as using Flock as a case study here is that we
- sort of slid into a relationship with a company where it was just sort of like, well, they're the only
- one to do it, I guess, because they were the first one that said hi, right, which is sort of
- I met my wife when I was 15. She was the first girlfriend I had, because she was the first person that
- spoke to me. And we've been together ever since. But living in a time where you just slide into fairly
- serious commitments that then increase. It starts with one, and then two, and then you have 40, without
- us ever thinking about that. And so I think Linus's law says that if there's
- a lot of eyeballs, then every bug will be shallow. And so I really think that what we need to do as
- a university town with so much expertise, with so much interest is to create the mechanisms by which
- all types of engagements that we may do as a city, not just
- right now, but for the next 10, 20, 30 years, that it gives us as a community the opportunity to govern,
- the opportunity to speak, because ultimately that's what local government is about. And so, again, thank
- you for demonstrating all of that today. This is, you know, nerdy and fun. But more importantly,
- it's about, you know, critical issues about what it means to be an American in a digital society, what
- it means to be a resident in the United States in a digital society. So just so, so grateful for all
- of your earnest participation
- today. Thank you. Well it's practically impossible to follow up what President Asari said and sound
- any better than him but I just wanted to just I'll take a brief moment then too and just say I'm really
- really grateful to all of you.
- For being here, for speaking so passionately, each and every single one of you said something that spoke
- to my heart and that I agreed with, and I found common sense in everything. It's very, very scary for
- us as a body to sit up here in front of a big angry crowd. Whether you're here because you agree with
- us or not, it's still scary. So I really appreciate you guys coming out and sharing your hearts with
- us, and I am looking forward to this just being the first step.
- Because I think we can move on to bigger and better things and we're gonna we're gonna all band together
- and make this world better So thank you with that. Let's move to a vote on resolution 20 2604. Thank
- you Councilmember Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes, Rallo. Yes rough. Yes, Rosenberger. Yes Flaherty. Yes
- Stalsberg yes, you don't miss yes That passes unanimously nine to zero gavel back to president. Sorry. Thank you
- All right, two more things to go, y'all. We have one more additional period of public comment. And so
- this is a maximum of 25 minutes allotted. If you have not commented in the first section, which I don't
- think anybody did, but if you'd like to comment on things that were not on the agenda, now is your chance.
- Again, please sign in, say your name or alias, and we will recognize you. Is there anybody in chambers
- who would like to give a comment on something not on the agenda? Seeing none, is there anyone online? No.
- There is no one online, then we move ahead to issues of council schedule. A very quick thing, so on
- March 11th, everyone, is our deliberation session. I'm asking...
- Please tell me your opinions here if we can do a special session just a 30-minute special session To
- act on some deliberations by the hiring committee At six o'clock. So just appending a special session
- to our Session is that okay? with Please that councilmember Rosenberg I guess I just don't ever think it
- 30-minute meeting is okay. I mean we have to be here at 630 So then we have to kind of leave at 620.
- I do think 530 is better Okay, I I'm not opposed to that if Does anybody feel the same? Councilman Rizouk
- has trouble getting maybe we may 545 with that suffice The day before right, okay
- Okay, so 545 Anybody opposed Okay, everybody. So we'll we'll I'll work with the clerk and council staff and
- the waning moments to get that scheduled. But I'm so, so very grateful. And again, echoing the comments
- of Council Member Stosberg earlier, we are so very grateful for Attorney Lehner and Attorney Bennett.
- This is their last public meeting with us. Thank you for your service to the council. Thank you to your
- service to the city of Bloomington. And we hope that you continue to be vibrant participants. We'll look
- for you on the online comments. But we're so very grateful for everything that you've done. So everybody,
- please join me in applauding. With that, any other issues of council schedule? Seeing none, we are adjourned.